What this project is really about
Look around your neighbourhood - between the busy roads and buildings, you’ll find little patches of green: parks, gardens, and urban forests. They give us fresh air, shade, and a home for birds, insects, and other creatures. But keeping these spaces alive isn’t always easy. Sometimes water is hard to get, sometimes people forget to care for them, and sometimes they just need a bit of creative engineering magic. That’s where you come in. Your challenge? Design a clever, eco-friendly solution to help a green space in your neighborhood thrive. It could be a way to water plants, improve soil, collect rainwater, create shade, or even get the local community involved. You’ll explore ideas, sketch them out, and build a working prototype or scale model. Your design might use pedal power, cranks, sunlight, wind, or something completely unexpected—you decide! In the project lecture, Prof. Sivakumar from IIT Madras will take you through first principles thinking - a way of breaking down problems to their basics so you can design better solutions. You’ll also learn about how water moves, how to work with the local environment, and how to think about all the people and resources involved. Problem Statement: How might we design a low-cost, eco-friendly system or device that helps our local green spaces stay healthy and beautiful, using resources and energy sources available locally, while bringing people together? Project Deliverables: •Pick a green space and find out what it needs most. •Create a design plan with sketches or digital drawings. •Build a working prototype or model. •Explain how your idea works and why it fits your chosen site. Learning Outcomes: By the end of this project, you will: •Learn how to break down real-world problems and design smart solutions. •Understand how environmental and community factors shape your design. •Build teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving skills. •Experience the fun of making something that actually helps your city’s green spaces grow.
Cities are getting hotter, more polluted, and more concrete-covered every year. Green spaces — parks, gardens, urban forests — are disappearing, taking with them clean air, biodiversity, mental health benefits, and flood protection.
You will apply engineering and ecological principles to design a sustainable green space for a specific urban location — including planting plans, water management systems, and community programming that make the space functional and beautiful.
Green infrastructure is increasingly recognised as essential public health and climate infrastructure. The engineering, ecology, and design skills you develop are at the intersection of landscape architecture, urban planning, and environmental engineering.
What you'll walk away knowing how to do
This project isn't about memorising facts. It's about building capabilities that transfer — to your next project, your next class, and beyond.
Learn from people who do this for a living
You're not learning from a textbook. You're learning from practitioners.
Sivakumar
Professor
Professor Sivakumar M. Srinivasan is a Professor of Applied Mechanics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He holds a B.Tech and M.S.(Research) from IIT Madras and a Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from Louisiana State University (1993). His research expertise covers smart materials and structures, inelasticity/plasticity, micromechanical modelling, fatigue, computational...
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