Electricity and its impacts on people, society and

Architecture
It never crosses our minds when we reach for the light switch when entering a room. Back when
there was no electricity, broad daylight would slowly fade into the darkness of night. Despite
surviving thousands of years without it before, we have come to depend on it to complete our
everyday tasks and have built our lives around it.
In spite of it being fairly new, being invented around the late 19 th and the early 20th centuries,
electricity has created a whole plethora of industries and opportunities which dint exist a hundred
years back. Localizing electricity brought a huge change in the society, people could now go out
freely at night, din’t need to carry around a lamp, owing to the installation of street lights which
eventually gave way to nightlife. Everyday tasks like cooking became faster and efficient,
microwaves and refrigerators came into existence, the food industry saw a massive surge.
Communication boomed, the modern internet, televisions, phones, computers trace their roots to
electric power. Transport facilities saw a major improvement in their efficiency, metros and bullet
trains entered the picture. This eventually led to a major remake of the built forms around us, the
spaces, the buildings, their characteristics and their purposes changed.
Architects and engineers were no longer limited by heights and floors, with the combination of
electric power, elevators and modern materials of construction, the first of the skyscrapers, like
the Home Insurance Building in Chicago came into existence in the late nineteenth century. Electric
power even endorses the escalators which dominate today’s shopping malls, airports and some
railway stations. It paved way for the introduction of modern materials of construction such as
steel, Rcc and due to the increasing factories, their production expanded. Architecture was no
longer dictated by the climate and the location of the area, steel and glass buildings were built in
places which previously had only seen buildings with local materials. For instance, the palaces of
Rajasthan or the Mughal forts were built keeping in mind the hot and humid climate of India, the
major material of construction was stone, with elements such as jhalis, courtyards etc. Owing to
the invention of ACs, you could use RCC in such places, have huge glass windows with major
sunlight coming in without the user sweating a ton. Artificial lighting started taking over natural
sunlight in the interiors which are even experimented with different colours. Chimneys and
fireplaces in houses are now a thing of the past, being replaced by heaters in colder regions. All of
this sowed seeds for modern architecture, new isms started coming up. Deconstructivism, futurism
etc would not exist today if not for electricity. The structures designed by famous architects like
Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind etc would not see the light if not for electricity.
Computers powered by electric energy source softwares such as autocad, sketchup etc, which
points towards the digitalization of architecture.
Prior to the Industrial revolution and the invention of electricity, the limitations of nature, climate,
surroundings etc, dominated the design and the form of the structure, but in today’s time, the
built forms dominate the way we perceive nature and its resources. The structures with built in
solar panels, can now be used to generate electricity. The last hundred years have seen enormous
improvements in the society, and how it perceives the buildings around it more than thousands of
years of human civilization, thanks to the invention of electricity.
- Sanjana Bhandiwad, Sem 5, Sr no. 4