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KWA building to ooze green

The utility has conceived it to make a different architectural statement

As supplier of a liquid indispensable to life on the planet, the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) should know how important safeguarding the environment is. Construction, taken for granted by much of humanity as a seemingly innocuous act, has a deleterious impact on the ecosystem — from precious groundwater to the atmosphere.

Hence, when a water utility decides to construct a building, it has to be doubly conscious about the need to minimise the impact on the environment. On this score, the authority, it seems, has taken a step in the right direction.

In construction, green is the new black, and the authority has decided to construct a green building for its headquarters, right in the heart of Thiruvananthapuram.

The city is gradually seeing an increasing number of structures built to the specifications of the green building concept. A few have even won the Indian Green Building Council certification.

The utility’s present headquarters building in the city can only be described as nondescript. The authority itself has been undergoing a few sweeping changes in its functioning, and it is only natural that a new building was thought of.

The tender process for the 11-storey building, each floor having an area of 10,000 square feet, is in the final stages. Construction is expected to be completed by 2015, Ashok Kumar Singh, Managing Director, KWA, says. The sister concerns of the KWA, including Jalanidhi, will be shifted to the building.

The building will house the proposed central control unit of the authority, Mr. Singh says. The unit will give an entirely new dimension to the way in which the utility goes about its daily functions. It will be from where the utility’s top officials and its think-tank will manage the State’s water resources, monitor water supply and other issues round-the-clock, all this with the help of the latest technology that is being adopted. And to think that all these will happen in green settings.

As for the green character of the building, G. Shankar, architect of the Habitat Technology Group, says the structure is part of an effort to “make a different architectural statement.”

Cost and energy efficiency and eco-friendliness will be the criteria for selection of material and technologies. The building will have a passive solar lighting design, in which windows, walls and floors are made to collect, store and distribute solar energy, avoiding use of mechanical and electrical devices to the maximum extent possible. The main building will be oriented not to face the sun directly, remaining in the shade. It will let in as much light and air as possible through natural means.

Green terraces will adorn various parts of the building at different levels. The building will come up in such a way that the land “will not be hurt” at all, Mr. Shankar says.

“We will be taking the terrain as it is since the building is designed to suit the terrain,” he says. With water and energy efficiency being crucial in determining the “greenness” of the building, its storm-water and grey-water management will be unique. Sensors and similar fittings will ensure minimal use of water for actions such as flushing, while the water will be recycled grey water from an internal treatment plant.

The walls will be of compressed mud blocks with use of cement being minimal.

“It will undoubtedly be a different architectural statement,” Mr. Shankar says.