How to build a home that stays cool in summer

A few weeks ago in Bengaluru, I listened to a panel of architects from India and Europe talk about the failure of modern architecture. They’re all part of a platform called SHIFT (Southern Heritage and Insights for Transformation) that’s trying to find ways to build sensibly at a time when cities are overheating. Turns out, it’s largely the architecture that we copied unthinkingly from the western world—towers of reflective glass and prefab concrete, windowless buildings that rely entirely on air-conditioning—that has failed us, creating islands of heat and raising our electricity bills. We’ve all lived or worked in buildings that feel like furnaces in the summer and freezers in the winter—unless there’s some kind of artificial temperature control.

As heat waves become common every summer, European architects are looking towards examples in Asia and Africa, where traditional architecture took the climate and environment into account, as SHIFT’s founder Christine Lemaitre, who is also CEO of the German Sustainable Building Council, explained. They are creating this repository of knowledge and projects that architects around the world can be inspired by and build in conjunction with the local environment and ecology.

But that isn’t to say everything from the past is glorious and flawless; architecture will have to adapt and meld old and new systems to engage sensitively with the landscape while taking economics into consideration.

This is exactly what a handful of Indian architects have been doing, building housing and office towers that consider the terrain, climate patterns and water table. They are using a mix of traditional ideas, modern materials and cutting-edge technology to build for a world of climate instability and create models of architecture that reduce reliance on artificial heating or cooling mechanisms, as we report this week.

If you browse the bookshelves of CEOs, you’re likely to come across the name Jim Collins. The management thinker commands an almost cult-like following in the business world, having authored bestselling classics such as Good to Great, Built to Last and Great by Choice, all of which grapple with a central question: what does it take for a company to become truly great?

Having decades spent studying why some companies flourish and others fade away, Collins has turned his gaze to a more personal question: What to Make of a Life, which is the title of his new book. Abhishek Mukherjee speaks to the best-selling author about his new book, and how companies can thrive in the age of AI.

It’s been a year since actor-musician Jaden Smith changed tracks to become the menswear creative director at Christian Louboutin. The 27-year-old recently presented a collection that marries functionality with fantasy, challenging established dress codes without straying too far from the maison’s signature silhouettes.

He believes fashion is a feeling and wants to create the kind of clothes and accessories that make people “feel like superheroes”, he tells Pooja Singh in an interview, while also discussing his plans for Christian Louboutin’s menswear.

Pritam and Pedro, a new buddy-cop series (on JioHotstar) produced, written and edited by Rajkumar Hirani, is so elementary in its cyber cops-and-robbers storytelling that it must be for children, writes Raja Sen.

As a show to amuse children and inform them about the perils of online addiction, this series could be considered sweet and well-intentioned enough…but then Pritam and Pedro throws in the swear words, as if mandated by the streaming networks, and this series lands in no-viewer’s-land: not suitable for children, not likely to keep grown-ups engaged. Read more.

What better stage to find the best new talent in football but the World Cup? A couple of great performances at football’s biggest stage can catapult obscure players straight to stardom and to contracts worth of millions from some of the most storied clubs.

German giants Bayern Munich have already reached an agreement for Nathaniel Brown, the versatile 23-year-old left-back who shone in Germany’s first two games. Liverpool are ready to pay $100 million to lure Ivory Coast’s Yan Diomande away from RB Leipzig. Everyone from Manchester City to Liverpool and Real Madrid are joining the race to sign Morocco’s Ayyoub Bouaddi.

Rudraneil Sengupta takes a look at players whose World Cup heroics can open the doors to joining the biggest clubs. Read more.

Humid weather isn’t just enervating, it can also alter the hydration of your skin, trigger excess oil production and disrupt the skin’s natural balance. The skin acts as a protective barrier, regulating moisture levels and shielding the body from external influences. As humidity fluctuates, the skin responds by either retaining or losing moisture. High humidity often stimulates excess oil production, leaving skin greasy, while low humidity accelerates water loss, leading to dryness, tightness and irritation.

Shahnaz Husain breaks down how humidity impacts oily, dry, combination and sensitive skin, and the remedies to restore the skin’s natural balance during the monsoon months when humidity is at an all-time high, and explains how Ayurveda recognises the relationship between climate and skin health.

With Leica’s help, Xiaomi has created one of the best camera-centric smartphones ever, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. In previous years, Xiaomi’s ‘Ultra’ had paled in comparison to Oppo’s and Vivo’s, but the 17 Ultra is a flagship smartphone that runs the most powerful processor to date, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. It is also the thinnest Ultra so far at 8.29mm, weighing just 218.4 grams, and runs HyperOS 3 (based on Android 16). The reduced weight helps mitigate wrist fatigue, especially since you’ll be clicking way too many photos with this smartphone, Sahil Bhalla writes.

Shalini Umachandran is Editor, Mint Lounge.