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The FuturArc InterviewKevin Mark Low, Malaysia & Sanjay Prakash, IndiaBy Dr Nirmal Kishnani & Bhawna Jaimini

Photo of Kevin Mark Low by Jaziah Mohd. Ali

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Kevin Mark Low“Architecture, as we understand it, is going to change quite drastically in the next 10 to 15 years because the act of building something new is itself inherently unsustainable. Old is soon to be the new black.”

Kevin Mark Low might be described as the most obscure of the well-known architects of Southeast Asia. Like Glen Murcutt of Australia his oeuvre is mostly small residential projects that are deceptively simple, painstakingly executed and which exemplify the relationship between maker, craft and place. His low profile is in part due to a disdain for self-promotion and branding. Despite this, he has a growing reputation both as advocate for honest design and as a practitioner whose now substantial body-of-work speaks of Architecture’s place in modern Asia. It helps that he has a book out. Typical of the creative autonomy he demands, it is designed, photographed and written by him. Since setting up his practice in Kuala Lumpur, aptly named smallprojects, Low has lectured and taught at universities in Asia and Oceania. His work and articles have been published in architectural journals internationally. Low currently divides his time between architectural and product design and teaching architecture at Universiti Malaya.

NK: What does it take to be a good architect?KML: A good architect is one who is self-honest and self-critical about the work he or she does. A lot of commercial work these days is passed off as design-focussed work, mystifying design and its practice for students and young architects who are led to believe that marketing design and being actually creative in design are one and the same thing. Architecture can only be understood when we are absolutely honest about what it is.

NK: What is the essence of your work?KML: I believe that anything of value had its start in first having asked an important question. Douglas Adams wrote about a supercomputer in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which was given the task of finding the answer to life, the universe, and everything, and after a few million years of computing, gave the number ‘42’ as the solution. We have more 42’s floating around today than can be imagined—solutions that exist for their own sake and fail to answer any particular question of relevance. I try to reduce architecture to finding relevant questions first, those that inevitably have to do with issues of content, then work from these issues of content through finding questions we believe we already have answers for.

NK: Could you break down the idea of content as it pertains to architecture?KML: There is the narrative of two architects who were asked to design different phases of an aquarium. The first asked what an aquarium should look like, and drew inspiration from the multi-chambered Nautilus seashell. Upon dissecting it, he found that the chambers within corresponded quite well to the various sizes of tanks required, and the spiral that formed the spine of the creature perfectly described circulation paths based on the Fibonacci series—and his aquarium ended up with the wonderful volumes expected of an iconic building, and well… looking somewhat like a seashell.

The other architect started by asking what the sea was about. And he discovered upon research it was about high tides and low tides; about the most luminous shallows of the Maldives and the deepest shadows of the Mariana Trench; it was about the most delicate ecosystems known to Man, as well as the most powerful forces of currents on Earth. He found that it was about sunrises and sunsets and about the food chain. And his aquarium became something beyond a single name—it opened before sunrise and closed after sunset; had tanks so shallow you could walk in them and feel fishes nibbling at your feet, and others so deep you had to take elevators down 150 feet to understand the true meaning of the word pressure. It connected in a way to the deeper functions of circulation and use that helped our understanding of everything the sea was about, with rooms that adjusted to the rising and falling tides, and tanks that changed mood according to the weather outside. And its form developed in a way that grew from the force of the content that filled it, with the originality of its shape a simple by-product of the strength of its content.

Architecture inspired by form merely imitates form itself in the design of a clever answer. Architecture inspired by content creates form only as a relevant response to a powerful question.

NK: Give us an example of this in your work.KML: In the Sibu Pavilion, the task was to design a public toilet as a pavilion for the 2006 Malaysian Garden Festival at the Lake Gardens. The question asked was why all public toilets look the same regardless of location and user profiles—they all inevitably have blank walls on three sides and one with a door in it, with high level windows all round for ventilation and a modicum of light. The design for the project took the specific context of its site, an urban city park, and put form to the toilet as a bush. The true intent of the design, however, was found in a modesty wall screening the toilet’s entrance, a tall mesh construct about 20 feet long and a foot and a half wide, filled to the brim and compacted with dead leaves, fallen branches, and basic organic detritus. The form grew merely as the means to hide the toilet (in whatever ugly manner of shape it might take on) and to serve as a template as a park garbage can for botanic waste, thus eliminating the need for city hall to cart away truckloads of organic trash to dump sites far removed from the city.

At a different scale, the gardenwall offices was a business office development sited along the edge of a six-lane

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For our annual ‘bumper’ Green Awards issue, FuturArc presents two interviews—recorded separately by Editor-in-Chief Dr Nirmal Kishnani and our writer in India Bhawna Jaimini—with the two leading architects.

vehicular artery—its design began with the question of what highway architecture could be—why were high-rise building elevations similar on all sides, regardless of whether they faced each other, a delightfully forested hill, or a polluted highway? The design put pollution next to pollution—the flushing toilets, air-handling units, cleaning stores, office parties, timeouts, cigarette and coffee breaks, were lined up against the highway in the form of a screened vertical neighbourhood of balconies and grated decks to allow for cross-office exchange, neighbourhood fence-chat, that borrowed cup of sugar, and morning toilet-stops.

NK: How do you persuade clients to buy into this way of designing?KML: Talking issues of needs rather than wants helps—I think we’ve gotten everything we want over the last half century, but we have not really asked questions of what we really need. I design to reference questions of necessity, use, maintenance, buildability and relative economy.

NK: Many of your clients are wealthy; most of your works are private residences. Do they differentiate needs from wants?KML: It is beginning to dawn on most, the good sense of saving resources for the important things. Architecture is really just a shell for the stuff of life—something simple enough to fill with the experiences, activity, furniture, flowers, books, and rugs that make up the real voice of someone’s life.

NK: What happens when small projects become big projects? Do you feel comfortable working on a bigger scale? KML: It’s the hardest thing in the world to jump scales in architecture; philosophies that work well at a certain scale don’t work well at another. I would suppose I’m comfortable enough, although the management dynamics changes drastically—I find making clients and contractors understand that they are only working for the interests of the building more important than any other consideration, with the increase in scale.

NK: Let’s talk a little about your role as an educator. You teach at the University of Malaysia. What would you do if you had a chance to take over a school of architecture? What is the first thing that you would change?KML: I would recalibrate what’s important. Form is a default aspect in the expression of architecture, but if we place emphasis on form rather than content, meaning dilutes. The distinction between design and styling will have to be clarified in the way that design references content, whereas styling references form.

Architecture inspired by form merely imitates form itself in the design of a clever answer. Architecture inspired by content creates form only as a relevant response to a powerful question.

Photo by Sandhy Sihotang

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For the 2006 Malaysian Garden Festival in Kuala Lumpur, the Sibu Municipality of Sarawak commissioned a local landscaper to design what they felt would be an enlightened twist on typical garden pavilions—a toilet facility with which to service the festival grounds. The project found recommission under the care of smallprojects, and their pavilion took on yet another twist in the form of the original global toilet, a bush.

One end of the pavilion became a lounge for a sofa and armchairs under the shade of a grand old tembusu tree with views of the lake, while the other end became a tearoom. Nestled between the two was the bush, a grove of 120 eugenia aromaticum trees, given formal entry and screened by a 3-metre-tall compost wall of steel mesh and dead leaves, with basin niches cut into the thickness of the wall to facilitate the washing of hands. A narrow maze behind the wall ran through the tightly packed trees to a squatting pan commode at the heart of the grove.

As a public toilet for the practical use of visitors to a garden festival, the bush might have had limited use in its role as a pun. However, the pavilion’s form as a bush was irrelevant; the only thing that was vital was what announced the toilet and gave it identity—its compost wall. Serving as an alternative to the four blank walls, high band of windows and the single door that characterises the typical

Sibu Pavilion

Project DataProject Name Sibu Pavilion Location Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Completion Date2006Site Area72 square metresGross Floor Area72 square metresNumber of Rooms4 (none roofed over)Building Height1 storey

1 Compost wall 2 & 3 Details

NK: What would that mean in terms of curriculum?KML: It would be based on the liberal arts system that I studied under in the States. Aside from the coursework required for an architectural degree, there were required credits called free electives one had to take from fields of study unrelated to architecture—a liberal arts education recognises that some of the biggest advancements in any discipline come from outside of it. Regarding architecturally-related coursework, I would prioritise the study of architectural history above most others—an understanding of the events behind any architectural work, movement, or period, offers insights into originality and creativity, providing an understanding of how things develop through circumstances of culture, society, and political events. It helps us understand some of the deepest sources of content from which the strongest ideas of form are generated.

NK: In the way that you just described curriculum, there are still the traditional compartments of history, structure and environment. Would students be able to integrate these at the drawing board? KML: In a deep sense, true integration can’t really be taught—it is what separates the best students from the field. But a curriculum can help if it includes classes such as carpentry, welding, site work—practical application in the building trades. In doing so, students would develop a clearer understanding of how the different aspects of construction and its sub-disciplines come together in architectural design.

I would also better integrate, to a degree, departments of study within the built environment. Most schools of architecture and design serve as umbrellas for architecture, interior design, landscape design, and planning, but are, for all practical intents and purposes, quite separate. The built environment is never just about each discipline independently going about it their merry way; it really only comes alive at the junctions where disciplines meet.

NK: In your book you speak of two preconditions of sustainability: first, that it must include morality of intention; and second, that it must be deeply contextual. Put together it suggests that to be sustainable is to do the ‘right’ thing—tapping into personal conscience—for a specific set of local conditions. The discourse on sustainable development will not however allow us this luxury. Each building has a global impact and must be measured by some independent metric, beyond the subjective gut-feel of an architect. This dialectic between local and global began in the 1970s and 1980s with critical regionalism. What is your view of where we are now? KML: Your question has two parts to it. To begin with, it is not a personal conscience on specific, and thus debateable, issues I refer to with respect to morality, but one simply directed at speaking honestly about what we each do as architects—no branding, no adjectives and phrases picked up from a trend magazine or from others and passed off as a ‘philosophy’ of design, no greenwash. Sustainability simply begins with the honest acknowledgement of a truthful state of affairs, which is not easy, admittedly, given human nature.

With respect to your comment on critical regionalism, the term has always been more geared towards formal responses as opposed to responses of content. It is just the first layer of the onion, so to speak, having a formal definition of context with reference to material and formal sensitivities, textures, techniques, one’s responses to the tree or high-rise next door, and climate—east sun, west sun, prevailing winds, and how the workings of a hot and humid, or cold and dry environment could provide cues for relevant design strategies. That critical regionalism binds itself to formal concerns rather than deeper issues of content is the reason why I believe it failed to encourage deeper discourse in architecture—there is simply too much to dispute when formal considerations are the only issues at hand—you like purple, I much prefer pink.

The next layer of the onion begins when one engages issues of specific context, where the cues predicated by the content of a specific place begin to matter. The fact that on a street in India, little differentiates between a cow, bus, car, pushcart and human being—life is simply too rich for such differences to matter. Or the fact that workmanship varies so much between different building cultures, it’s surprising no one has taken subsequent cue for such, in developing their own work. Or that drains in Jakarta collect stormwater to completely different effect than those in Beijing. What questions might one ask of these observations? Deeper consideration of specific context has us ask questions of specific social and natural phenomena that otherwise go forgotten. This second layer will take architecture to a more profound level, but it’ll be a task. Well, perhaps not… perhaps we just haven’t quite started asking these questions as yet.

NK: I’m also questioning the impact of the ongoing transformation of the planet, what that means to the practice of architecture. What, for instance, does climate change mean to how you put pen to paper? Do you have thoughts on this? I have difficulty finding an architectural perspective on this.

Architecture is really just a shell for the stuff of life—something simple enough to fill with the experiences, activity, furniture, flowers, books, and rugs that make up the real voice of someone’s life.

public toilet, the Sibu Pavilion engaged considerably deeper significance as a functional and dignified template for park toilet facilities, a trash can for fallen leaves, detritus, and herbaceous park garbage to reduce the need for botanic waste transfer by city hall trucks to a dumping ground elsewhere. The leaves and green garbage, piled on and compacted over time, began their humid journey to decay and decomposition, removed from the bottom of the wall at the end of the natural cycle of decay for use as garden food—a rectilinear recycling bin for the symbolic and functional processing of city park ecology.

Client/OwnerSibu Municipality (Ng Sek San)Architecture FirmsmallprojectsPrincipal ArchitectKevin Mark LowMain ContractorFe Design Sdn. Bhd.Images/Photos Kevin Mark Low

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4 Detail resolution of eccentric existing walls for the folded stairs in the Aviary House 5 Detail of unruly service entrail support along back lane of the Threshold House

Dubious examples set by influential practitioners take years to undo, and undermine the very foundations of creative integrity.

The gardenwall offices began as a request for an alternative proposal to the typical office block development, its owners being desirous of a different approach to configuring close to a million square feet of rentable space. It was an unusual proposition to begin with, since the word ‘alternative’ would not have been something immediately associated with the ubiquity required of the office tower, itself grown out of Western concepts on what constitutes contextual appropriateness, white-collar work environments, and the formal corporate image.

Consequently, questions of commonly held beliefs regarding the typical office building were asked: the object was to have office space designed for the specific context of Malaysia—its humidity, driving rains, burning sun, extreme rates of growth and decay, material and building culture. Specific context did not merely end there, however. Local attitudes towards human behaviour in multi-level garages, pollution, morning tea or coffee breaks, office meetings and daily lunch, the act of work itself and anything that critically examined the modern workspace for the Malaysian masses was given consideration. Subsequently, terracing of car park levels to accommodate the sloping site simultaneously functioned to serve the twin spatial needs of long term and short term users; building masses were configured to create an east-to-west pressure differential for effecting cross ventilation; every office within incorporated two full sides of operable glazing to maximise internal airflow; and the shared plaza space for the four towers of the project was conceived as a forest of trees for the shade of formal arrival, an arbour for lunch and meeting, and as a cooling sink for the west-facing shared main entrance of the development.

gardenwall offices

Project DataProject Name gardenwall offices (PJTC) Location Damansara Perdana, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. Completion Date 2010Site Area21,840 square metresGross Floor Area 103,473 square metresBuilding Height19-20 storeys in four blocksClient/OwnerTujuan Gemilang Sdn. Bhd.Architecture Firmsmallprojects

The gardenwall offices utilises building materials of local supply and its relatively cheap labour rates to effect the nuances and textures of its origins. Together with its highway-facing vertical neighbourhood, where that cup of sugar and fence chat could be exchanged, and where common building pollution of kitchen clutter, toilet smells, cigarette breaks and air handling hum meets the pollution of the highway, the project sought relevance to the specific context of its physical site, society and culture and the rigours of use. And together with all the requirements of natural ventilation, functionality, building culture and construction economy in mind, the project was designed to be mostly self-maintaining as it weathers the violent grace of tropical humidity.

Principal ArchitectKevin Mark LowMain ContractorLAL Engineering Sdn. Bhd.Mechanical & Electrical EngineerMEP Engineering Sdn. Bhd.Civil & Structural EngineerJPS Consulting Engineers Sdn. Bhd.Images/Photos Kevin Mark Low

KML: Architecture, as we understand it, is going to change quite drastically in the next 10 to 15 years because the act of building something new is itself inherently unsustainable. Old is soon to be the new black. By that, I don’t mean recycling materials or fashionably reusing heritage buildings—that’s old hat. It will all be about re-inhabiting existing buildings in a way that puts essential life and uses to them. There’s a photograph of an abandoned downtown skyscraper in Caracas which I saw in a lecture by Alfredo Brillembourg, which found fresh adoption by squatters, filling the grids of the empty curtain-walled mullions with their own dwellings to magical effect of use and reuse. The role of an architect changes entirely with this, it’s not merely about bricolage, and not exactly about engineering either, but an amazing fusion of the two where you’d have to be much more insightful in order to create order, grace and delight.

Narelle McMurtrie lives in Langkawi and Penang and has started an entirely new sort of entertainment and hotel experience to fund her care for abandoned animals. What she does redefines conservation and adaptive reuse: older buildings, replete with their 80-year accretion of renovations by various inhabitants, ghastly or otherwise, are spatially and functionally optimised with fresh activity to terrific effect at minimal cost. Some ‘design’ entrepreneurs have begun to cash in on ideas she has built on over 12 years, to lesser functional effect and considerably greater cost.

NK: Who do you think is making a difference in this part of the world? KML: I think it’s the teachers who make a difference, people who aren’t necessarily famous. Like Cheah Kok Ming and others who teach at the National University of Singapore. Chu Lik Ren, who used to write quite a bit and is beginning to get back into teaching. Naziaty Yaacob at the Universiti Malaya, who teaches as passionately as she critiques. It’s all those individuals who understand the distinctions between form and content.

NK: Who do you think is pretending to make a difference?KML: Few things kill creative integrity faster than fame, so a look at famous people is a good place to begin. A notorious educator who has wielded tremendous influence over the last 35 years at the Architectural Association in London and the Bartlett, has almost single-handedly led an entire generation of students and young architects astray in championing the exuberance of creative form to the neglect of creative content—form driven by form itself. It is the sort of thing that has the same origins as opera houses predicated on pebbles by the Pearl River Delta, and Olympic Stadiums deriving inspiration from bird’s nests (or formal Chinese artefacts, as claimed). Locally, a well-known landscape stylist who, over the years, found inspiration of the purely formal kind in original work by Martha Schwartz, Peter Stutchbury, Narelle McMurtrie, Patrick Blanc, (and the ‘less original’ Balinese style), has commercialised and rebranded much of it in lectures and publications, and in doing so, legitimised the aesthetics of cut-and-paste design or design disc-jockeying for a great many young students and architects.

Dubious examples set by influential practitioners take years to undo, and undermine the very foundations of creative integrity.

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6 Exterior view 7 Details8 Interstitial space

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Sanjay Prakash “The main problem with Green architecture in India and abroad is that it justifies and legitimises consumption.”

Sanjay Prakash is an architect committed to energy-conscious architecture, eco-friendly design, and people’s participation in planning. His area of practice and research over the last 30 years includes passive and low energy architecture and planning; hybrid air-conditioning; autonomous energy and water systems; bamboo and earth construction; community-based design of common property; and computer aided designs. He is Principal Consultant of his design firm, SHiFt: Studio for Habitat Futures Architects and Engineers Pvt. Ltd., and was a partner of Daat and Studio Plus. Our writer in India Bhawna Jaimini met with Prakash to discuss Green architecture in the country.

BJ: You are one of the leading practitioners of energy-conscious design in India. What prompted your interest in this field?SP: I grew up in the 1960s, which was a period of very high growth. People were doing incredibly well and discovering themselves in every field around the globe. However, this growth was breeding on the grounds of a strong chemical industry. Soon this phenomenon was being questioned. Its implications on the environment were serious and could not be ignored. Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring that documented detrimental effects of pesticides on the environment. It helped to launch the contemporary environment movement in the USA. E.F. Schumacher’s book Small is Beautiful championed the cause of appropriate technologies. He was a British economist who questioned the industrial paradigm and the way it was applied in the developing world. All this came to head with the 1973 oil crisis, which for the first time highlighted the fact that oil is a non-renewable resource and it will deplete in the years to come. As a student in those days, I would have ignored what was happening around but it was intellectually unsatisfying for me to do so. I came from a strong science background and was deeply intrigued by the second law of thermodynamics that states that all mechanical processes run down and only life processes run up. It was one of the foundations in understanding architecture. Many sustainability thinkers today are also working on the same principles.

BJ: Availing information is easy in today’s world as compared to the time you started. How did you tread your own path?SP: I was advised by my thesis guide to spend a week in Pondicherry where I read international publications on sustainability in The Energy Research Institute (TERI) library. However, most of the publications and journals talked about Westernised concepts and I had to comprehend them for their application in the Indian context. I also learnt from experimenting, as the cost of failure was comparatively very low in those days. Later I worked as a lab assistant in IIT Delhi where I tested models on energy-conscious technologies physically and designed three passive solar buildings. Soon I earned a reputation and people started approaching me only for sustainable buildings. My nomination to become the representative from India to the International Union of Architects’ panel on architecture energy exposed me to people from other countries who were engaged in the same field where we could exchange ideas and notions around the globe.

We have replaced our sense of space making, place making, and community making with building construction.

Very few architects are addressing genuine social and environmental issues while most of them are being hired to design an outer skin of something that will sell better.

BJ: When clients come to you, are they aware about sustainable buildings or do you educate them?SP: Now I do not get clients looking for plain vanilla building as the reputation has set in. Most of them are looking for content and not the shape of the building. Moreover, we have stopped catering to private clients outside a competition.

BJ: Do you think the role of an architect is less prominent today?SP: Yes, the role has tremendously decreased. Employment and salary levels have gone up but the contribution of architects to the society is practically zero. Very few architects are addressing genuine social and environmental issues while most of them are being hired to design an outer skin of something that will sell better. The compassion towards designing to serve people is clearly missing. The profession is now more focussed towards serving itself.

BJ: Seventy percent of the population in India lives in rural areas and are not dependent on architects for designing their spaces. Why have we ignored this sector? What is the biggest challenge faced by them?SP: In a way, it is good that we have ignored the rural population because we will only end up spoiling it. Around the world, only five 5 to 10 percent of buildings are designed by architects. In India, the scenario is different and worrying because rural people are no longer in a condition to help themselves and are dependent on petty contractors who are on a break from the urban areas. I have worked in the rural areas for many years and have found out that the biggest harm done to them is the de-scaling of their societies so that they are incapable of being on their own. For example, an occupation like wood carving which was a prevalent occupation of the rural areas is no longer encouraged, leaving the people engaged in the

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Campus for Agilent Technologies 9 East entrance Banjaar Tola Tajsafaris10 Scenic view across the bath tub

BJ: Architecture in India in the past was by default sustainable. However, there was a shift and the process of gimmicking architecture started. Where do you think things went wrong?SP: The society shifted gears to the industrial mode that is by default not sustainable. Another major factor was the domination of private real estate funded by global capitalism post-1991. Private real estate thrives on seeking construction in order to gain value and profit instead of seeking solutions to problems faced by the society. For example, a local market on a footpath that is serving the local people better is not promoted and encouraged as opposed to grocery shops in huge air-conditioned malls that generate revenue in the form of rent. Therefore, what we are seeing today is not architecture but impatient global capitalism that employs architects to design and construct for profit and not for people. This race of profit making tends to defy and camouflage the issues of sustainability altogether.

BJ: Your approach towards sustainability is not just confined to the periphery of the building industry but goes well beyond it where every human being is responsible to the environment that he creates around him. How do you plan to carry forward this approach?SP: I would not be able to answer about how I would take it forward, but I can definitely tell you how I incorporated sustainability into my own day-to-day life. As a student when I was learning about energy consciousness in architecture, a lot of light was thrown on lifestyles we follow and how they influence architectural practices. I became inquisitive about how things come to us and where they go. This applies to all the day-to-day commodities we use which include food, clothing, etc. For example, 5 grams of coffee has 200 litres of water behind it; every cigarette has 400 litres of water behind it; and so on. Knowing and learning about simple frugal habits and how they affect us, our society and our environment is the first step towards sustainable development. I have been consciously working to reduce my carbon footprint. I recently gave up my car and commute by public transport.

Photo by Mayank

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Agilent Technologies, a leading life sciences organisation, chose to set up a corporate hub in Manesar to house all its various offices at a central location. Crafted for the ultimate office experience, this building imparts a distinctive character to enhance productivity while maintaining the sanctity of a quiet work environment. Integrating various standalone features with energy efficiency, the project serves as an international model in ecologically appropriate office architecture in continental tropical climates.

One of the central roles of the building is to set an example of innovative design and construction that would inspire a change, and conceptually re-orientate existing practices in the building industry. More than a symbol of Green architecture, it has also taken into account all aspects of meaningful design by considering the holistic effect of embodied energy of materials used, energy efficiency in envelope, life cycle cost of equipment and systems, and is a real performer towards sustainable design.

The east approach within the campus is characterised by a large cantilevered office section with distinctive tensile structures that mark the staff entrance. This side lets the morning light filter in from certain portions. Elsewhere, the interplay of small square glass windows and local sandstone responds to the need to block the sun from the west and east. Despite this, the largely glazed (but protected) north and south façades instigate a feeling of the modern glass office from the inside without paying the attendant price of extra heat gain.

The northwest formal entrance, under a triple height space, integrates a water body and a concrete shear wall. This entrance leads to a grand atrium with a tree, which is the connecting element of all the spaces within the complex. Intermediate spaces have been provided for repose from the intense work environment in the form of a roof top cafeteria, gardens, terraces and the atrium itself. Intermittent provision of internal and external courtyards also ensures enhanced indoor air quality. Meeting rooms project outwards, as distinct entities offering magnificent views of the building and outwards.

Campus for Agilent Technologies

Project DataProject Name Campus for Agilent TechnologiesLocationManesar, Gurgaon, Haryana, IndiaCompletion Date2009Site Area10 acresGross Floor Area50,000 square metresClient/OwnerAgilent TechnologiesArchitecture FirmSanjay Prakash & AssociatesStructural ConsultantNNC Consultants (Dr Maqsud)Electrical, Lighting ConsultantLirio Lopez (Linus Lopez)HVAC, Plumbing, Fire Fighting, BMS ConsultantSterling (Gian Modgil)

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activity without work. We have taken the action out of the rural areas and prefer to outsource. In addition, by outsourcing we are giving more employment to the people from other countries instead of empowering our own. The solution to this can only come from the people of India in the years to come. The architects should definitely address issues of the rural sector but not in the way they have served the urban sector.

BJ: Do you think the rating systems for Green Buildings in India confuse sustainability with low energy consumption? What are the major aspects being ignored?SP: The main problem with Green architecture in India and abroad is that it justifies and legitimises consumption. The comfort levels for buildings are based on American standards that are obsolete in the Indian context. Many passive elements of Indian architecture like a veranda or a courtyard are conveniently ignored and are not encouraged. However, GRIHA (Green Buildings Rating System India) is formulating a system that will change the aspect of Green buildings from inside. For example, points will be deducted for air-conditioning the building. This will in turn set a benchmark for achieving zero consumption in our buildings. However, the difficulty levels in getting GRIHA rating has made it unpopular among private real estate. It will take some years to make it a mainstream trend. We have to train ourselves to have sensitivity towards our buildings that is beyond numbers as most of the ratings are based on fudged numbers and assumed stimulations.

BJ: Is it actually possible to achieve zero consumption or is it just a theoretical concept?SP: Going by the present statistics, we will never be able to achieve zero. Near zero is the target we have to set for the years to come. However, the world as a whole will have to achieve zero energy consumption because it cannot function otherwise. Zero energy models will be composed of many components that are difficult to quote now.

What we are seeing today is not architecture but impatient global capitalism that employs architects to design and construct for profit and not for people.

The major challenge is to understand what is wrong with energy conservation techniques and not focussing on what is right.

Personalised work environments utilise a hybrid underfloor air-conditioning system based on the principle of cooling the user (not the space) while efficient variable air volume systems work even for the increased ceiling height of 3.2 metres. The extra height, as well as the limited floor plate depth of 25 metres, allows much of the office to operate in natural light.

The building currently utilises only about a quarter of the permissible floor area, allowing for future expansion to full coverage. For now, this land (at the south) not only serves to create valuable outdoor spaces for recreation, but also enhances biodiversity by stepping the landscape, cutting dust and noise. The flexible circulation patterns, tall daylit spaces, exposed concrete wall finishes and unhindered hill views to the south impart structural integrity in concept and planning.

Environment Optimisation ConsultantEnvironmental Design Solutions (Tanmay Tathagat)Landscape Consultant Integrated Design (Mohan Rao)Interior ConsultantFirm Terra (Anand Krishnamurthy) Main Contractor Ahluwalia Contractors Limited Electrical ContractorMASBMS ContractorJCIHVAC ContractorBluestarInterior ContractorSidcoPlumbing ContractorDSALandscape ContractorQCC

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BJ: Do you think India is an architecturally aware nation where people recognise buildings by their architects as compared to other developed nations? Do you think you have a signature style to which people connect?SP: Urban India is definitely not architecturally sound and rural India is rapidly forgetting its roots. This has largely happened because we have replaced our sense of space making, place making, and community making with building construction, which is entirely different. Our economies are now more building-oriented and not solution-oriented. Until and unless architecture as a profession is serving the people and addressing their issues, people will not recognise it and connect to it. When the architecture I practise is allowed to be made and is being appreciated, it is a sign that people do connect to it.

BJ: Is it possible to achieve a perfect sustainable development programme in the years to come? What are the major challenges demanding immediate solutions?SP: The major challenge is to understand what is wrong with energy conservation techniques and not focussing on what is right. Only then can we convince the clients to adopt such technologies. The fact that these technologies do not sell is because there is a reason for not doing so. For example, if one decides to go for omitting air-conditioning in the building, we have to address the problems that come with it like flies and dirt. Any measure adopted to support sustainability will have its pros and cons and the designer should know in depth about it, only then will it become a mainstream phenomenon. Mindlessly omitting air-conditioning etc., will not serve any purpose.

BJ: What are the current projects taken up by your studio?SP: We are designing the campus for Delhi Technical University. The campus is planned as a pedestrian-friendly, permeable structure that integrates seamlessly with the existing campus. Another institutional campus is for the Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur, that is designed as a low impact but high performance settlement. Spire Edge, the first mainstream Green office complex, is a radical, unconventional and sustainable complex, which serves as a point of reference for future infrastructure development. It is also under construction. Dr Ken Yang designed the main tower with an iconic green ramp and water collecting scallops.

11 South elevation 12 Aerial view 13 Perspective view

Photo by Mayank Photo by Mayank

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Spread over 60 acres, the camp is situated across the Banjaar river along the edge of the Kanha National Park and regularly plays host to a variety of wildlife from across the river. The river is used as a watering place by animals, notably by one of the largest population of tigers in India.

In the first phase, the property has two camps situated along the river, ensuring a grand view yet providing a feeling of total privacy. Each camp has nine tented rooms and shares common facilities like dining, lounge, swimming pool and spa. The guest rooms are floating structures with a sweeping tensile roof, nestled between trees beyond the riverbanks, on small hilly outcrops. They open towards their own private decks suspended over the river. Each tent has been carefully sited to provide guests with a spectacular view of the river. The decks have a dropped ledge with railing so that nothing comes between the guest and the river view.

All buildings have a very light footprint. They are raised structures supported at only a few points on the ground, allowing continuity to the natural undergrowth and drainage. Being lightweight and temporary, this type of

Banjaar Tola Tajsafaris, near Kanha National Park

Project DataProject Name Banjaar Tola TajsafarisLocationMadhya Pradesh, IndiaSite Area60 acresGross Floor Area2,250 square metresClient/OwnerTaj Safaris (An IHCL, &Beyond and CIGEN Joint Venture)Architecture FirmSHiFt: Studio for Habitat FuturesMain ContractorVicon Hotels and Realities Pvt. Ltd.Structural ConsultantPrem Krishna; SHiFt: Studio for Habitat Futures Electrical, Lighting ConsultantLirio Lopez

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construction dramatically reduces the impact on the surroundings as compared to a regular building of say, concrete and brick.

A space enclosed only by canvas walls and roof can become uncomfortably hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and many top-class tented camps in the hospitality sector in India are cooled and heated by very large electrical systems. Rather than this, at Banjaar Tola, the use of double layers of canvas with insulation materials and air gaps has been an intrinsic part of this design. A fogging system cools the air between the two roof layers and the roof, reducing summer load. The eco-friendly air-conditioning system, taking up the residual load, uses a reversible cycle to efficiently deliver both cooling and heating. Though Kanha temperatures can vary from near zero to above 40 degrees Celsius, air-conditioning and heating energy demand are reduced by a factor of four by careful design. The electricity demand has been further reduced through energy-saving lights and gas-based water heating.

Local materials like tiles, bamboo and local timber reduce dependence on imported resources. Apart from small quantities of canvas and steel, local

14 Tent suspended across the river 15 Interior view 16 Infinity pool 17 Site plan

HVAC, Plumbing, Fire Fighting, BMS ConsultantMcD BERL Environment Optimisation ConsultantPierre Jaboyedoff Landscape ConsultantIntegrated Design Interior ConsultantChristopher Browne

materials and methods dominate the design approach. The service buildings, located near the roadside are derived from local village architecture.

Small but sensitive interventions in the natural landscape help conserve the land and its features. Soil erosion is being checked, indigenous species of trees are being introduced wherever necessary, water drainage by natural channels is being established, and waste disposal is monitored. Wastewater is treated by wetland systems before being used for irrigation or released into the earth for recharge. A man-made natural lake, without artificial liners, will assist the collection of water in the second phase and become an innate part of the native landscape.

No wilderness project leaves the ecology untouched, albeit in slight ways. This project seeks to maximise the positive impacts on the local environment with minimal ecological footprint. It seeks to let nature repair itself, and replicate the spirit of stewardship with which such travel needs to be undertaken in these last preserves of our global biodiversity.

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