This 'Eco House' features sustainable, climate responsive architecture

So this house has been called the eco house which is actually short for eco-friendly house and it's called that because it's been built on the concepts of sustainable design. Sustainable design is a very big field and when you say sustainable design what might come to one's mind is mostly maybe a house made of mud of bamboo of alternate materials but the problem that we have is when it comes to more like bigger constructions and so on we often have a shortage of labor with people who are experts in taking up this sort of construction work. So then again people tend to go back into the more frequently available materials and construction styles. As a solution to that what we've done is we have taken this approach that we like to call climate responsive design and what that means is literally architecture that responds to the climate of a locality. So in the case of the eco house we are now in Kottay and so that means we've got hot and humid climate and a very good amount a very high amount of rainfall. So basically what we have achieved in this project is mainly so the house it cools itself right so we don't require any air conditioning all throughout the year however hot it is outside. We have put in some very unique solutions with which the house cools itself and there is always a good amount of ventilation all throughout the house. Apart from that there are many other things that we have done to make a design energy efficient. So energy efficiency is a very very big part of sustainable architecture. So how have we done that so this is these are all very simple simple solutions. So like I said because of the ventilation systems we have we don't need to spend any energy or power on air conditioning right and apart from that when we walk around you can see how well lit the house is naturally with the huge windows it's got and all of that. So during the daytime we really don't ever have to switch on the lights and that by itself is saving a good amount of power. So these are very the basic concepts of what makes the eco house really an eco-friendly house. We have actually put together some very different strategies for the eco house. First of all we would like to talk about is the materials that we've used. It's mainly made out of burnt clay bricks because it's mud based and it does insulate the building to a greater level than a concrete block structure would. Then another thing that we've done is we have got have this double level layer ceiling and it's got a layer of concrete with truss work on top and above that we've got the mangler tile roof. So what happens is in between the exterior roof and interior roof there is an air cavity that's formed and that really helps insulate the structure from the heat. Then apart from that we have these very specific ventilation strategies for the building. First of all we have a wind tower in place so what that means is that above the staircase there is this certain tower that we have installed and it's got openings on all four sides and which does not have any glass it's just mosquito mesh and grill for safety and because of the altitude it's in any window that's opened in any part of the house because of the stack effect hot air automatically rises and because of the height these openings are at any hot air in the house it automatically gets sucked down to that point and so as a result there's always the certain air movement inside the house. So anywhere there's a window open there is a very good air channel that really keeps the airflow moving in the rooms and automatically cools the spaces. The kitchen has a courtyard of its own because of this courtyard the kitchen is very well naturally ventilated as well as has a good amount of natural daylighting as well. And in all the bedrooms there's something else that we've done so that's with the help of these exhaust fans. So conventionally exhaust fans are placed on the exterior walls of bathrooms and so on but so in the eco house there are four bedrooms and each of them have an attached bathroom. So in the wall in between the bedroom and the bathroom there is this exhaust system that we have installed into place and what happens then is that particularly when the doors of the bedroom are closed so that means it's disconnected from the wind tower system of the entire house. So when the doors of the bedrooms are closed any hot air inside these rooms it's taken out with the help of this exhaust system and that's how we really manage to cool down the house and not rely on air conditioning. So the site of the eco house is quite unique it's located on top of a hill. Since we have the site in hand there is a sort of a kind of barricade on the eastern and on the southern side. For landscaping in the eco house we have first of all made sure that none of the existing trees that were there on site before construction we've made sure that all of them have been maintained and the second thing is that all the plants that have been newly planted we have made sure that it's a local species right and the advantages of that are many many. First of all again it's the climate responsive solution so most of them are quite low maintenance and they're very much in alignment with the rainfall patterns and drainage patterns of the site. So most of the site is very much permeable we've not covered it with interlock tiles or anything the idea is water that falls into the site it should be able to seep back into the soil. Majority of the site is covered with buffalo grass so this is a very local species of grass that anywhere you go in like you know any abandoned playground you go to around Kerala this sort of grass is what grows automatically there and the good thing is that the amount of water it takes back into the soil is also very very good so only when water goes back into the soil will our wells around actually have water in them so in the end it all really comes back to us and the best thing is about its very simple maintenance pattern it will grow automatically you don't really have to invest a lot of time or effort into maintaining it. Another feature of the eco house is that you might have noticed that we have a huge number of windows and the question that might come up is when you have so many windows isn't there a lot of heat that's accumulated inside and not just light so to compact this problem what we have done is that usually when you look at a sunshade in any building it comes up till approximately you know 0.6 meters but in case of this house we have extended the sunshades to a great level to a little bit more than one and a half meters so what happens then is that any sunlight that falls on the structure there is a huge shadow being formed on the building because of this very extended sunshade and as a result of that there is a lot of indirect light coming in not direct light before we started off with the design the owners had some very simple demands and a very few specific ones first of all they knew that it had to be a four bedroom house they told us that they did not want any extra elements another thing that they were specific about is that they wanted a certain area of the house to be very public like which is totally isolated from the rest of the house and the second demand that they had is that so in most homes the car park is a very important feature in the elevation of the house so the owners here knew that they do not want that they wanted a secluded garage a little bit away from the entrance the idea is when someone looks from the gate they're not able to tell if there is somebody home or no which is very easy to identify when you have a car parked towards the front they are very much interested in entertaining people so there is some sort of party deck which is attached to the main grand room the the main hall living and dining room it's you can open it all out and there is a deck outside and it's very much designed for a good gathering where there are a considerable number of people and like the whole space it's like a big party hall in the end