New Delhi, July 4 -- 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-towers of reflective glass and prefab concrete 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...