JOIN USThe challenges of designing a green building
The urban building boom comes with an irretrievable environmental impact. The construction industry globally consumes many natural resources and generates immense solid waste.
Resource and energy efficiency are the most critical sustainability indicators that decide the environment-friendliness of a building. The supply chain in the construction industry shows that early design intervention plays a vital role in reducing construction waste. Alternative workflows in construction help reduce carbon emissions.
The architecture, engineering, and construction industry aims for restorative, regenerative and innovative design—from table to site; this contrasts with the conventional linear model of "take, make, dispose."
Standard practices include:
- Building information modelling (BIM).
- Energy mapping.
- Sustainable materials procurement.
- Prefab techniques in pre-construction and post-construction phases.
- These methods minimise a building's eco-footprint and promote resource-efficient construction and renewable construction materials.
Architects have a crucial role in minimising the destructive impact on the environment.
At a residential complex for ITC Guntur, the use of local labour, materials such as bricks, double-glazed units, and low-reflective paint to complement the sustainable strategies of the GRIHA-certified development make the design process further sensitive to its carbon footprint.
GRIHA is an acronym for Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment. GRIHA is a rating tool that helps people assess the performance of their building against specific nationally acceptable benchmarks. It evaluates the environmental performance holistically over its entire life cycle, thereby providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a "green building."
The embodied energy is a calculation of all the energy used to produce the materials that make up the building. It includes the energy used in mining, manufacturing and transporting the materials and the services in the economy that support these processes. Using building and finishing materials with low embodied energy reduces embodied energy compared to a conventional scenario.
Sustainable building materials include Pozzolana Portland cement for plastering and masonry mortar, recycled vitrified tiles and locally sourced Kadappa stone and granite. Substituting metal roads for porous hardscape materials like grass-crete, complemented by tree plantation along either side, further aids surface heat reduction.
Measures like water recycling (for flushing and landscape maintenance), water conservation via rainwater harvesting, reuse of Sewage Treatment Plant water (for flushing and landscape), swale drains for the site, etc., make the development eco-sensitive. Swales drains are shallow ditches with gently sloping sides that ensure proper drainage and minimise rainwater runoff.
Water-efficient fixtures in the building and landscape have approximately halved the water demand compared to GRIHA base-case standards. Renewable energy technologies installed on-site include a solar PhotoVoltaic system and a 46MW wind energy harnessing system.
The ideal scenario would be when the annual environmental burden of buildings falls below the earth's ecological carrying capacity. While we actively attempt to change the dynamics of the built environment, it is deeply concerning to know that in the next 40 years, more urban fabric needs to be built than has been built in the last 4000 years.
ShaonSikta Sengupta is Director of Edifice Consultants Pvt Ltd., one of India's premier design consultancies quartered in Mumbai.
(ShaonSikta Sengupta is Director of Edifice Consultants Pvt Ltd., one of India's premier design consultancies quartered in Mumbai)
Check out latest DH videos here