Designer-architect Kalpana Ramesh shares her cheat sheet for urban water conservation.
As published in Nature inFocus on 31 January, 2020.
If someone were to ask you what features you would like to include in your dream house, what would you say? Ample sunlight, a lot of green space, or maybe your very own vegetable garden? Hyderabad-based architect and designer, Kalpana Ramesh probably had these in mind as well when she was designing her house in 2010. But the number one feature on her list was something most of us would never dream of pencilling in – a water tanker-free house.
Ramesh’s home in Gachibowli, Hyderabad, serves as a model for urban water conservation, and has been featured in local and national news channels. She frequently has visitors who want to study her techniques and implement her ideas. Her efforts did not end at her doorstep, and she worked to make her entire residential community less dependent on water tankers. Today, Ramesh leads Water Initiatives for SAHE (Society for Advancement of Human Endeavour), a Hyderabad-based NGO, where she has been instrumental in water conservation projects like ‘Save 10K Bores’ which worked to revive defunct borewells using rainwater. She is also leading the ‘Live The Lakes’ initiative to restore and revive lakes within the city. First her home, then her community and now the city itself – Ramesh is making sure that she leaves no bore, lake or rainwater harvesting pit unturned. ‘Be Your Own Water Warrior’ is her motto, and she lives by it every day.
In this interview, Kalpana Ramesh talks about a tailored approach for urban water conservation and how effective use of spaces can enable better water management in cities.
Read the complete interview here.