Buildings Extraordinaire

CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre

• The striking 20,000-square-foot building has been designed around a courtyard, thus acting as a "light well," providing light to the adjacent rooms
• With natural light coming from the courtyard together with energy-efficient lighting systems, about 88 percent energy is saved, which is much higher than that of an electrically-lit building of the same size. Sensors fitted in the courtyard detect the illumination levels and activate the deployment of efficient electric lighting. Withdimmers controlling the illumination levels by turning off unnecessary lighting, about 90 per cent of building spaces can have daylight access and views to the outside. Many areas have utilized jaalis to prevent glare and heat gain, while aiding aeration
• Wind towers have been erected to ‘catch’ air and cool it as it passes down the shafts. This results in cooling to about 8 degree Celsius, thus substantially reducing the load on the air conditioning systems
• An indigenous method used for water purification involves letting the water pass through the roots of two plants–Phragmites Australis and Typha Latifoli–for purification. After this, the water is used for landscaping, called the “Root Zone” treatment.

ITC Green Centre, Gurgaon

• This building spread in an area measuring 1,81,000 sq ft area has zero water discharge
• It is designed in a way that it saves about 53 per cent energy over any conventional building
• There has been almost 40 per cent reduction in potable water use
• Water treated in the premise itself is then used for flushing and landscaping
• The building has been mostly made of fly-ash in bricks and concrete, and it also utilizes high efficiency equipment and several eco-friendly housekeeping practices

BCIL T-Zed Homes

• The eco-friendly residential complex has a bio-gas digester of 150 kg capacity for converting the degradable kitchen and other organic waste
• The members of the residential complex have even set up a Green Council with three members who are initiating the drive of getting waste from outside the campus
• The swimming pool has no ceramic tiles but other options such as hard-sand, simulated ceramic-coated granular surfaces that are easy to maintain. Natural stone is used for wall and floor claddings of the pool
• BCIL's air-conditioning method utilizes ammonia as a refrigerant. This technology called ‘district refrigeration’ involves a central chiller plant that is driven by ammonia which then distributes the thermal temperature through a network of pipes to each of the homes and is thus free from CFC or HCFC

• AT BCIL Collective project, the company has again come out with an extraordinary technology that allows air-conditioning for 72 master bedrooms. The technique is a blend of earth tunnel ventilation and nocturnal cooling systems in which no energy is used inside your home. The system works with low-energy pumps for every set of four bedrooms and is easily executed and costs about Rs.200/- per sq. ft.
• The campus does not have any water supply connection from the outside but instead has a unique network of shallow, open wells that provide water to the campus, without using bore wells which exhaust groundwater resources. Also, the campus does not have any sewerage connection as it utilizes all the waste water which is treated and reused for gardens in a way that water eventually percolates into the open wells and hence completes the loop of use, treatment and reuse.

Rabi Rashmi Abasan, Kolkata

• The residential complex has 25 private houses with a total connected load of 380 KW, out of which 58 KW is supplied using the roof-integrated PV
• Each house is equipped with 2 KW of roof-integrated solar PV tiles
• Every cottage is surrounded by a small water pond
• This south-facing solar passive architectural project is designed in such a way that during summers, the hot air within the building rises due to convection and is thrown out through ducts in a ‘turret’ at the top of the building
• Also, each house is fitted with a 100 litre per day solar thermal water heater and care is taken to provide enough insulation
• The hydro-pneumatic water pump installed in the complex only operates when the pressure reduces in the system and only up to the speed required to maintain full pressure, thereby saving energy during operation
• There is also a 6 KW grid-connected roof-top system; the electricity generated by this is then used for various purposes like pumping, garden lights and the internal lighting, fans and other power demand in the night
• The cost of each roof-top PV system was about Rs 0.7 million and the approximate cost of each dwelling came up to Rs 4.8 million