Solar Hot Water

Passive Solar Hot Water One of the cheapest and most effective ways to use solar energy is for heating water — replacing electric geysers with solar heaters can reduce your bills quite dramatically. These panels are quite different from the … Continue reading

Asbestos

Why Asbestos is Poison Asbestos reinforced cement sheets make for a cheap and effective roofing system that minimises the amount of steel used to erect it. Asbestos itself is a naturally occurring mineral found in many places and the fibre … Continue reading

Renewable Materials

Apart from materials derived from waste or those that are recycled, we also have the option to use materials that are naturally renewed. Examples of this are plantation timbers (which do come with their own set of problems). Plantation Woods … Continue reading

Recycled Waste Materials

There are numerous by-products, of some process or industry, that are considered waste and and it only takes a little imagination to recycle them to be of use for building and construction. Flyash As a fine residue from coal-fired thermal … Continue reading

PMK Bungalow

The design of a private residence at Kondhwa, Pune, was a very exciting project. No Reinforced Concrete Cement (RCC) has been used and we opted for load-bearing walls that are cheaper and, in my opinion, better for a building of … Continue reading

Unacceptable Work

There are certain kinds of work this firm will not take on, and it’s better to make that clear from the outset. Statutory Permissions I will not take up the responsibility for obtaining permissions from government bodies such as the … Continue reading

Factory [PSah] – Initial Visit

I’ve never done a factory design before so this is going to be a lovely challenge. The clients contacted me because they want a plant which is as ecologically sound as is possible.  The site is a 2-acre plot in … Continue reading

Membrane Structures. Finally.

Have been waiting a long time for something like this to come to India and finally a Bangalore based company called Shadeflex has tied up with a German company called Textil Bau GmbH. Shadeflex and their German partner’s sites are … Continue reading

Looking for Eugine Pandala

The “Inside-Outside Mega Show” this year took quite a while to go through and there was a fair amount of new stuff (after you’ve been to many of them, a sort of staleness creeps in). The nice part is that … Continue reading