LEED and GRIHA ratings have their place, but a new generation of architects is asking a harder question — what does it mean to design responsibly on a warming planet?
The architecture profession has a complicated relationship with sustainability. On one hand, buildings account for nearly 40% of global energy consumption and a comparable share of carbon emissions. Architects, more than almost any other profession, have the technical capacity to reduce that number significantly. On the other hand, the dominant framework for doing so — third-party certification schemes like LEED, BREEAM, and GRIHA — has in many cases become an exercise in documentation rather than genuine environmental performance.
The problem with certification-first thinking is that it optimises for the certificate, not the outcome. A building can achieve a platinum rating and still consume more energy than a thoughtfully designed uncertified building, if the baseline is low enough and the credits are gamed correctly. This is not a criticism of the schemes themselves — they have done enormous good in raising minimum standards — but of the professional culture that has grown up around them.
A more honest approach begins earlier and goes deeper. It begins at the brief stage, asking whether the building should be built at all, and if so, at what scale. It considers embodied carbon alongside operational carbon — a distinction that certification schemes have historically underweighted. It asks whether adaptive reuse of an existing structure might achieve more than a net-zero new build.
The most compelling climate work being done in architecture today is happening at this earlier, harder stage. Practices that are publicly committing to carbon budgets per square metre, refusing certain project types, or redesigning their fee structures to reward low-carbon outcomes are changing the terms of the conversation. They are treating climate not as a compliance requirement but as a design generator.
For young architects entering practice, the question is not which certification to pursue. It is what kind of practice to build and what values to embed in it from the start. The technical skills are teachable. The conviction that it matters — that the difference between a well-designed and a poorly-designed building has real consequences for real people and a real climate — that has to be developed deliberately, and early.
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Written by
Climate Design Lead
Nandita leads climate-responsive design at a multidisciplinary practice in Bengaluru and lectures on sustainable urbanism at CEPT University.
