 So, good morning everyone. My name is Jitain Prachapathy, I am an architect and I am faculty from Academy of Architecture. I am going to talk about context sensitive approach to sustainable building design. So, we will be talking about context, the approach to sustainable building design and why sensitive or how sensitive. Now, the sustainable design is with respect to or with reference to architecture. The contents of this lecture include the need for sustainable design and context based approach. This will be followed by case studies to illustrate the approach and the intent is to encourage students and professionals to design better. If you see in this slide, there is a old saying which says that we have not inherited the world from our forefathers, but have borrowed it from our children. So, we did to protect the environment so that our future generations can be taken care of and we cannot keep on utilizing or consuming resources at the rate at which we are doing. This professor Monika Jain, she so put it well that we are actually consuming a lot of resources is not it and the resources are actually finite in nature. So, we need to now be more sustainable, we need to conserve our resources and this can be done by adopting sustainable building techniques. So, judicious planning can provide a better environment, prosperity and good health. Vernacular architecture or traditional architecture evolved in response to environment, economy, social and technological context. This resulted in a regional flavor or language of architecture. Nature architecture evolved based on the context, whereas present day architecture is largely influenced by air conditioning and artificial lighting. This has been driven by the industrial revolution. What has happened is that now we no longer depend on nature or the context there is a disconnect with nature is not it. We do not need to design our buildings based on the climate where it is located, based on the technologies available, social needs. You find the same type of building being built everywhere all over the world because we have access to good technology. So, what is sustainable design? Can we learn from vernacular architecture and adopt it in today's context? Then we will link with tradition to and link it to our requirements today. Our requirements have changed from before, our comfort standards have enhanced, our needs have increased. So, we need to link the two together and what we can do is we can create a new and unique identity in our architecture or our building design. So, here we see a building by architect Ashok Lal and see what is done is he is used an innovative shading technique is also used photovoltaic solar panels over the roof over the courtyard. And it looks nice, so sustainable architecture can use past experience, but in a new manner and you can become innovative and it can look nice also. So, what we can do is we can create a new and unique identity by marrying the old traditions with the new technology that is available with us. This is a very nice definition of sustainable design by the Rocky Mountain Institute. I will not go into it because Professor Jain has already talked in depth about the need for sustainable development. But what we can do is you see the first picture here that is what she was talking about urban there is a rapid need for urban development and we are falling short we have nice high rises which are surrounded by urban squalor it is called slums, isn't it? So, can we make something which looks nice, beautiful and it is environmentally conscious also that is the goal. So, that was the context and now how can we approach the problem, what is the approach? This is what we do or we follow we do the preliminary analysis which includes studying the climate, the microclimate, what Professor Jain elaborated on, we study the site conditions and also the comfort requirements. Would a person comfortable in Europe or America feel the same level of comfort if he comes down to Mumbai or to Rajasthan, no no it is very different they will not be comfortable here. Similarly, if we go to Europe we will not feel comfortable, we will feel cold there ok. So, we need to know the comfort requirements also. Then we try to adopt passive solar architecture, passive solar architecture is using natural means to attain comfort and to reduce energy conservation. It is how do you use the sunlight, the wind, the materials, your design itself to achieve comfort ok. Typically, it uses these are the things that you can use landscaping, orientation of the building, building envelope like Professor Jain said, the materials you can change, techniques these are advanced techniques, simple techniques are shading, color etcetera. Advanced techniques like radiant cooling, passive down roughed evaporative cooling, chrome walls, induced ventilation etcetera they can also be employed ok. We look at daylighting also, because daylighting is free in India is not it sunlight is free and abundantly available, so we should use that. All this can be you know you can analyze all this by using softwares called simulation softwares which Professor Naik will be talking about in the next lecture ok. What this software do is they help in designing better, they can help you to evaluate two different hypothesis or building. The next step is to integrate alternative technologies into the building or site design. This include renewable energy, it includes water and waste management, it includes building management systems, low cost or embodied energy of materials also. Lastly, what one can do is you can validate your design is not it. Once it is built you can go and measure it. Before it is built you can go for a peer review, even after it is built you can send it to papers or get it reviewed by in journals ok. And lastly you can do a post occupancy evaluation. What is post occupancy evaluation? You go to the building after it is built and you go and ask the people who are using it. Is it now working as per your requirements? Any building that is built is built for the users is not it? Buildings are built for the users, so you should make sure that they are happy. This slide shows the type of analysis that can be done ok. This is a hand based tool called the bio climatic chart which you can use to analyze the climate and also find out the comfort requirements in a particular region ok. The next picture is a chart generated by a software called climate consultant. It analyzes the climate and it can give you various passive techniques which will help you to achieve comfort in a given area ok, in a given climate. This is developed by the University of California Los Angeles software is climate consultant free of cost you can use it download it and use. You can then analyze the micro climate. What are the conditions at site? Does it have trees which can help to shade, where is the wind coming from, how is the sun moving in the sky? You can orient your buildings accordingly, take advantage of topography of the site, self shading. So, many things can be done if you could do the micro climatic analysis ok. Lastly, the next picture is zoning where you can you know zoning helps you to integrate your other aspects of environment with your the functional aspects of your building and site zoning helps in that ok. For example, do you want to give pedestrian access only to your site or do you want vehicular access throughout the site? How does it help or not help? If you have vehicular access throughout the site, it will add to the pollution is not it. If you restrict vehicular access, you are reducing pollution. So, you can work on certain things like that ok zoning helps to do that. This is how you the building envelope or the building form can evolve by using this techniques ok. You can start out with a T and then you say ok this is working fine, but can there be a different arrangement and in the end you get something like this ok which looks at the wind pattern as well as the sunlight ok orientation. You can look at low cost or alternative construction technologies also. What happens if you use another type of material? For example, instead of concrete brick is cheaper or is instead of brick you can find soil stabilized mud blocks are cheaper ok. So, you can look at that and typically you can get about 15 to 20 percent saving by using different types of materials. This shows how renewable energy is incorporated in the site, rooftop, solar streetlights, rainfall harvesting, biogas plant. So many things are there which can help to make your site more sustainable ok. You can take advantage of simulation software like radiance to do the daylight analysis of a particular room. You can find out whether the light is enough or less, whether there are glare conditions what can you do to improve it. Can you change the color that means the reflectivity of the walls? Can you change the type of glass in the room? Can you add a light shelf to increase the depth of the day lighting ok. Many things are you can use. These are the passive technologies that can be adopted. You have cross ventilation, you have courtyard effect which acts as a heat sink, you have filler slabs, you have ventilated roofs, you have light shells here is not it. You can incorporate rainwater harvesting in your section of the building also ok. Now, we used all these technologies in a building which was built in a very backward area of India in a place called Bikan Gau and this was used in a school ok. The school was low cost, I will just show you the picture of that. So, this were actually the we have done this analysis for a particular building ok and that building is this ok. This is the education park at Bikan Gau in Madhya Pradesh in a very backward area of India very poor it experiences about 16 to 18 hours of load shedding a day. So, we had two things first of all we could not go for air conditioning not possible because load shedding is not it and in a very poor area charity based project. So, we could not make it a high 5 building also is not it. So, that was the context can you use air conditioning in that area in a rural area no. Can you make it can you use very very expensive material there no because the resources were not available is not it. This building was built by local contractors at a cheaper rate than conventional buildings in that area and also on time this building was built in 9 months ok. It is probably the first zero energy building in India in school ok in school campus planning. So, what you see here is the solar panels on top of the roof you see the light shelf you see windows that promote light that promote ventilation as well as provide glare free daylight you see the walls they are not plastered to save money ok. And what you see that is that although it is sustainable it is low cost it is in a rural area built by local people still it looks nice no. So, sustainable architecture or design or context based design should not be looked as you know you should not get scared by it, but you should think that is it is an opportunity to design better is not it. So, we will go to the next part which is now in urban context ok. This was for a rural context no air conditioning, but suppose someone some client comes to you and says oh I want to make a corporate office in Mumbai which is fully air conditioned I want to project a corporate image would you say no no I just do sustainable design. So, I will not do your work you cannot do that no. So, you will take up the project and you say ok let me see how I can optimize the building then ok and then you go ahead. So, typically as a professor Jane said because of air conditioning being widely available technological progress that we have now we have buildings which are built like this all over the world. The same type of building you will find lot of glass no shading devices irrespective of climate you will find this type of buildings all over the world. What happens to such type of buildings? You have to make them air conditioned it is 100 percent requirement. Suppose your air conditioning fails what will you do will those buildings function at all they will not because your windows are not open able you will feel stuffy inside and because there is so much glass it will become like an oven ok. So, it has to be then 100 percent air conditioned and there is a big impact on your energy builds ok. We did a small study sometime back a few years back in fact with Professor Dayak and we found that such a some similar buildings like this their energy requirement is so huge it can run into lakhs of rupees ok. So, what you can do is you can start by adopting very very small simple technologies which will not cost much ok. Things like orientation things like color things like your chajas ok shading devices that you can incorporate into the building and it will still give you a lot of significant improvement it will optimize your building ok. We did some simulation studies by using this simple techniques how much can you save just by using simple things which can be done in any building you can save typically about 16 to 20 percent of your cooling loads huge impact consider 15 to 20 percent of say 30 lakhs a month it is a huge saving ok. So, we use simulation simulation software for that ok. In this we used software called transys Professor Dayak helped in that. This shows some more results that can be obtained from simulation you can do a parametric analysis it is what if analysis what which type of glass is based which type of wall is based which type of color is based what happens if you use shading or no shading. You can do that type of analysis you can get results say the monthly cooling loads you can find out during which period your maximum energy requirement is you can do that. You can also find out from which part of your building most of the heat is coming from is it from the internal gains is it from the light and people are inside or is it coming from the building envelope. So, this is a building that we designed based on the context based on simulation and this is what we came up with this is a IT building in Mumbai and we were targeting it for lead gold ok. We used the lead guidelines to achieve a sustainable design here. This building won a national award in 2008 IAD awards we were the first runners up. Now if you see in this building you see large terraces right they help to shade the glass and the wall area. You see that it is not all glass you see this vertical things this verticals they are vertical shading devices they are called fins ok. They help to reduce the heat gain from a particular direction so these are shading devices the terraces are horizontal shading devices the fins are vertical shading devices. Glass area is reduced the type of glass is different we used reflective coated glass we reduced the size of the glass we used it only where it was necessary. We used a lot of local stone called malage stone available in Bombay ok. So what happens is that you optimize the building you can optimize the energy requirements by up to 50 percent by adopting passive solar architecture by using simulation ok. Now here also you find that even for a air conditioned building in a rural in a urban environment you can still have a good looking building is not it. So once again you can can you say that sustainable building design does not impose restrictions on the freedom to design it looks good it is functional and it is energy and resource efficient also. So can we conclude that it can be adopted in any place in India or anywhere. So again to sum up with the salient features are what of sustainable building design salient features are passive solar architecture, energy and resource efficient technologies Some tools that you can use are lead and grieha these are guidelines for achieving sustainable design you can go to the website you can download these guidelines they are free of cost go through them and use them in your design. You can use simulation to optimize your design and it is actually very good simulation professor and I will show you. So we use it a lot now. So this slide shows you know this is a passive no not passive this is a renewable photovoltaic panel which is used in the school at Bikkengaum. These are the filler slabs low cost you see it is not plastered we have removed the amount of concrete also. So we reduce the cost by about 20 percent in the slab there and see it is unfinished but still it looks nice. After doing the daylight studies in a software called radiance this is the type of daylighting that you can achieve in the this is in the school this is in one of the halls. So you see it becomes nice it feels comfortable there is no glare the whole room is lit so one should adopt these technologies. What are the benefits for students or young professionals who are going into the profession? You attract discerning clients you know clients are attracted to this type of work now because there is a awareness in everyone that sustainable architecture is required isn't it. So if you are geared towards doing all this type of work you will get better projects isn't it you will get to do more demanding more challenging and better projects. They are aesthetically pleasing green design you can promote corporate and social responsibility through your design and because you are being resource efficient you are being energy efficient you are also maximizing the profits for your clients. So it is a win-win solution for all. So the conclusions that can be made from this presentation is sustainable design is the need of the hour and it has many benefits it should be taken as an opportunity to design better isn't it. Everyone can make a dabba and make it functional isn't it but the challenge here is to also make it look nice also and be rooted in the context of the place where it is being designed. We can learn from vernacular architecture or traditional methods of design for implementing in today's context the context has changed today isn't it we have better access to technology our aspirations have changed so we can take the we can learn from the past but apply it in a new context. We can harness nature and technology to create a new and unique identity we should not look towards the old and try to replicate that only lot of people you know they try to they are hung up about vernacular architecture and they want to do that only today but that may not be the requirement today because our needs have changed isn't it try to what you call it try to develop a new language of architecture isn't it try to develop a new vernacular okay so and of course we have also talked about the expected savings and some issues regarding sustainable building design okay. Now if one wants to go further in this then these are the references that you can look at there are many books and guidelines available there are many organizations and websites these are a few of the scientists and architects working in India in sustainable design and then there are tools tools are available for doing sustainable design you can quantify your design find out which design is better how you can optimize your design that tools like the bio climatic chart you just need to do a Xerox and work on it climate consultant from UCLA website you can download it use it free of cost eQuest is a simulation software for doing thermal analysis again free of cost okay earlier it used to be available for lakhs of rupees okay now it is free of cost you can do your thermal analysis radiance is for doing daylighting again free of cost it does high end it can do what do you call it it can give you rendered images like 3d studio max also okay so it is worth investigating this software also there is another software software like eQuest called energy plus ecotech is there this is a commercial software by AutoCAD ESPR is a software developed by University of Strathclyde in Europe again a very very good software very robust but you need to spend time we use eQuest so I'd like to thank Professor Jane NME ICT Academy of Architecture IIT Bombay Solar Decathlon Education Park initial Shetty consultants okay and especially the organizers of this workshop for giving me the opportunity to present this lecture thank you