Climate-Adaptive Design: Building up Ladakh’s Ice Stupas

Abstract

This article chronicles the development of a climate-adaptive water management project, called the ice stupa, in Ladakh, a region in northern India. The ice stupa intertwines ambitious goals for environmental management and economic development with social, cultural, and religious values and practices. Early design prototypes appeared to offer a host of social, economic, and environmental benefits to the community of Phyang. Additional contextual considerations and unexpected challenges surfaced later, providing a more nuanced evaluation of the ice stupa as a design strategy. Today, ice stupa adherents aspire to harness a constellation of integrative co-benefits in project prototypes and to demonstrate the broader value of the design to other communities. Beyond simply addressing a discrete environmental adaptation in Ladakh, the ice stupa project highlights the tensions and possibilities in novel design partnerships and the challenge of producing integrated climate adaptive projects.