Tweet Chat: Sustainable Housing – Innovations, Opportunities, Barriers

#Alchemix

2:00 pm – 3:00pm, Wednesday August 22^nd 2012

Join us online on Wednesday the 22^nd of August 2012 for another Alchemix Tweet Chat.  This time the discussion is on Sustainable Housing in India and the Innovation happening in this space. The chat will last an hour and is an opportunity to engage with practitioners in the field, discuss and learn from their insights.

Featured Practitioners:

Rakhi Mehra co-founder of Micro Home Solutions (@microHS). Rakhi co-founded mHS, determined to make people and players think more creatively about urban housing and building inclusive cities. A Rhodes scholar and an MBA from Harvard (‘09) she has many years of international development experience with CARE, Ashoka Fellows, Grameen Bank, RABO Bank, Jeffery Sachs’ office at Columbia University. mHS works at two levels: (a) engaging in hands-on implementation of pilots and prototypes for proof of concept and seeking to influence policy and project design by undertaking research and providing consultancy services. (b)  Building and enabling innovative components designed for viable and scalable housing solutions that meet the diversity of low-income housing needs.

Chitra K Vishwanath (@chitrav)  a Bangalore based architect recognized as a leader in designing sustainable buildings, who has designed and implemented hundreds of residences, institutions and resorts – guided by ecological principles, integrating sound water, energy and land-use thinking into design. Her firm Chitra K Vishwanath Architects merged with Rainwater Club in 2008 to create Biome Environmental, a Bangalore-based firm focused on ecology, architecture and water.

Yogini Deshpande (@yoginisd) a PhD holder from Purdue University, has over 15 years of experience in the development of sustainable civil engineering materials and design of sustainable infrastructure systems.  In the past, she has worked as a Research Fellow at the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, India and has taught at various universities in USA.  She now runs @RC_Infra a boutique-consulting firm specializing in design, development and education of sustainable infrastructure systems. She is a member of various committees of the American Concrete Institute including ACI-130 Sustainability committee and the Associate Editor of Journal of Civil Engineering Research. Yogini also joins us in this chat as a Guest Blogger. Watch out for her blog with a summary of the insights from this chat.

Development Alternatives Set up in 1982 with the purpose to deliver sustainable development outcomes in a commercially viable manner. Working in the rural regions of India, Development Alternatives develops technologies and methods that help marginalized communities build affordable housing, that also meets their water, sanitation and energy needs. In the last few years, DA has focused on enabling communities to be climate resilient through the use of innovative tools and models. Primarily active in the semi-arid regions of Bundelkhand and the mountain regions of Himachal Pradesh, DA is working on an action research project supported by Fem Sustainable Social Solutions to create a comprehensive credit based eco-housing delivery model for rural families. Salim Altaf, from the Development Alternative Team joins us on the chat.

The Chat will be moderated by Parvathi Menon (@parvathimenon) CEO of Innovation Alchemy (@innovalchemy). The chat will explore four questions in Sustainable Housing in the context of India.

The questions we will explore

• Can we demystify Sustainable Housing? What is considered sustainable housing? Is it the same as affordable housing? Low cost architecture? Eco friendly green housing? Or housing that is low cost, green and also accessible to low income communities?  Or all of the above?

• WHO is the target market for Sustainable Housing developments – right now and in the future?

• What are the innovations in material, technology, process and the science of housing development that are breaking new ground? Who is working on these? Which part of the world is leading in sustainable development?

• And finally, what policy frameworks do we need in India to scale and expand sustainable housing developments?

How can you take part?

The chat is an opportunity to engage in an in-depth conversation with practitioners, thought leaders and people interested in this subject.  The chat will aim to debate and discuss the challenges, successes and innovations in the Sustainable Housing space. We will be using the hashtag #Alchemix to direct the tweets. The chat is open to anyone who is interested, so feel free to join in and share your insights.

If this is your first tweet chat

The process is very simple. Sign into Twitter with your account information and search for the hashtag #Alchemix. This will allow you to track all the Tweets being sent out during the chat. Make sure you include the hashtag #Alchemix in each of your tweets, that way everyone engaging in the chat can see your tweet.

You can also use the Tweet Chat Application on www.tweetchat.com. To use it, just visit the site, sign in with your Twitter account information and search for the hashtag #Alchemix.

If you know anyone in the Sustainable Housing space or who would be interested in learning more about Sustainable Housing, Innovation and Ideas that are developing in India please do share this page with them.

Follow us on Twitter (@innovalchemy) and be a part of the growing Indian Innovation Ecosystem.