One of the things that always amazes me is the many ultra-modern house designs that come up in this country and the continued building of drab monstrosities in India. Old buildings in India had a charm of their own - what you get these days (and what has been available for the past forty years, which is how long I have kept an eye on things) is completely inefficient, drab and lousy architecture. In hot cities you find people building homes with large glass windows and then using air conditioners to cool the insides - why on earth does anyone have to be so utterly stupid? And, in pleasant places like Kodaikanal, where my father bought a very nice place when I was a boy but sold for "development" later on, you have homes that are closed off to the outdoors despite it being cold up in the hills and there being beautiful scenery all around.
I like the Inhabitat website for their regular features of interesting architectural concepts - this link is to one such: http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/04/03/prefab-friday-stillwater-dwellings/ Stillwater Dwellings builds prefabricated homes which you can design to your requirements. I do think that there is a major market for this kind of home in South Asia. The time taken to build one of these homes would be short, you could have a far more efficient home if you use your common sense than the mason-built monstrosities that you get nowadays and the aesthetics would also be vastly superior to what is available at the moment. I daresay these kinds of energy efficient prefabricated structures would be ideal homes for India and other South Asian countries because of their low cost and their sheer efficiency compared to the homes available there at the moment. Stillwater's website is: http://stillwaterdwellings.com/index.htm Check their building plans out on their website.
