Design
Can India's Ancient Stepwells Help Solve the Country's Water Crisis?
Now largely obsolete, these Escher-like cisterns were once monuments of public life. And in the midst of water shortage, stepwells may refill their civic role.
Little-known giants of civic architecture puncture the landscape of west India: Stepwells. There are hundreds of these carved-stone trenches throughout the country, with winding staircases and colonnades reaching as deep as thirteen stories into the ground to draw from the water table. Many are strikingly beautiful. Most are quickly disappearing.
Emerging somewhere around the fourth century A.D., stepwells guaranteed a year-round water supply for drinking, washing, and irrigation to villages, particularly in the semi-arid states of Gujarat and Rajasthan. By the 11th century, they'd become canvases for grand, stylistically diverse architectural visions, and served purposes well past the utilitarian.