Bharati
Marathe

Green buildings are real, but certification cannot fix decisions made too late. In Mumbai, land economics push designs to maximise floor space, sacrificing orientation, shallow floor plates, and shading. Since those early choices fix most of a building's energy load, she argues regulation should tie floor area entitlement to thermal performance.

• Opens with a scene from her design studio: a student's climate-responsive project erodes step by step once maximum FSI enters the brief.
• Credits IGBC's Version 4.0 for making envelope performance mandatory, but notes it applies only to buildings that opt in, while Mumbai's mandatory DCPR 2034 sets no such condition.
• Links envelope-indifferent construction to Mumbai's rising land surface temperatures and urban heat costs.
• Poses direct questions to architects, developers, policymakers, and educators, citing Singapore's Green Mark floor-area incentive as a model worth adapting.

Urban environmental crises start at the scale of a single room, which makes interior designers a missing link between city policy and real outcomes. Every room manages energy, water, air, waste, and materials, and each can be measured and specified before anything reaches site.

• Draws on Earth5R's 2017 Powai work: composters ran and residents were willing, yet segregation failed because government bins did not fit Indian kitchens.
• Notes the gap has widened under the Solid Waste Management Rules 2026, which require four-stream segregation at source.
• Sets out practical specifications for energy, low-VOC materials, water fixtures, and construction waste, using IGBC, GRIHA, ECSBC 2024, and BEE tools.
• Closes with her rule for the profession: measure, document, replicate.

Cities and homes work as systems, so sustainable interiors are about designing flows of energy, water, air, materials, and waste, not adding plants or picking a "green" product. She presented this at the International Conference on Sustainable Space Design – Ideas to Impact, hosted by the Department of Resource Management at Sir Vithaldas Thackersey College of Home Science, SNDT Women's University, Mumbai.

• Used Earth5R's A.C.T. Powai project to show how community-scale circular patterns apply inside homes.
• Argued that design decisions must be quantifiable, materials judged on lifecycle impact, and ventilation, daylight, and thermal buffering calculated rather than assumed.
• As an IGBC Accredited Professional and design faculty, stressed that circularity must begin at the drawing board, at the scale of a neighbourhood or a single apartment.
• Shared the dais with her mentor Dr. Roshni Udyavar Yehuda, Ar. Vikas Dilawari, Dr. Elad Persov, Ar. Sarbani Ghosh, and Mr. Miki Kedem.

Earth5R's waste work succeeds because it connects every scale, from household habits to neighbourhood systems to entire river clean-ups, combining education, technology, community leadership, and circular economy principles. That integrated approach earned national recognition at the ELLE India Sustainability Awards 2025.

• At household level, the Home Equals Planet initiative trained citizens in segregation and composting, with progress tracked on data dashboards.
• At community level, decentralised waste units in housing societies enabled composting at source and brought informal waste workers into formal systems.
• At city scale, clean-ups extended from beaches and lakes to Mumbai's Mithi River.
• Aligns the model with Swachh Bharat Mission and the Sustainable Development Goals, with implementation in Mumbai, Pune, Thane, and beyond.