Not Ash, Just Green! – ACC’s Cement House

In recent times, nearly every corporate office building in the world has been bitten by the Green bug; energy-efficiency and sustainability are architectural buzzwords and no construction can remain untouched by these all-essential features.

This phenomenon has found its way to India as well, and the best example in recent times is the ACC headquarters in Mumbai. The country’s leading cement company received the LEED India New Construction - Gold rating award for the “Cement House” late last year. ACC received this prestigious award at a specially organized ceremony during the Annual Meet of Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) at the Chennai Trade Centre in Chennai.

Cement House is not a newly constructed building. It is a renovated building, enhanced with multiple features for sustainability and eco-friendliness. Cement House was the first project in the country to be registered under the criterion ‘major renovation of an existing building’. Cement House heralds the legitimacy of the belief that only new constructions can be part of the Green Building brigade.

The building has also received a Five Star rating for being the most energy-efficient in the category of energy-efficient office buildings. This rating has been conferred to it by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Ministry of Power, Government of India.

Central Atrium

The renovation architects unlocked a central shaft in the core of the building to serve as a ready-made grand atrium around which offices on each floor are laid out. The ample use of glass imparts a sense of space by merging the outside world with the interiors. The absence of partition walls, the wide glass windows and a huge central atrium have together facilitated the penetration of natural daylight, making artificial lights redundant for the most day.

The asbestos sheet roof has been replaced by a polycarbonate sheet and the atrium has been extended to the basement level for more and more daylight to enter. The atrium is enveloped by glass railings on three sides for maximum transparency and landscaped at the basement level to maximise the green area. The central atrium is equipped with a fire-fighting system as a measure of safety.

A central service core is used to house the HVAC and air-handling units (AHUs) on all floors and run other utilities like the chiller pipes, plumbing and drainage lines, and electrical and data cables. The service core now opens out into the sky-lit atrium. The design of the entire office revolves around the concept of this atrium and allocation of spaces around it.

The existing windows (1,320 × 2,080 mm) with wooden frames have been expanded to 1,320 × 3,000 mm sizes and renovated into more sleek aluminium open-able casement windows using double glazed units (DGU).

Green Roof

Three unused terraces in the building have now been transformed into verdant green roof gardens with plush grass, cobble-stone pathways, flowers, thick foliage and even some palm trees. Native plant species have been chosen as a measure to conserve water. The bright glass windows with these adjacent green terraces offer a refreshing view to the building occupants.

Power Conservation

Optical and motion sensors control the lighting in the workspaces, based on occupancy. Similarly, a new air-conditioning system regulates the flow of cool air depending on ambient temperature and occupancy levels in different areas of the building. The use of solar water heaters together with daylight harvesting and intelligent lighting and control systems help reduce overall energy consumption by 25 per cent.

Water Conservation

Project Orchid cuts down overall water consumption of the building by 50 per cent. All sinks are fitted with sensor-based, water-efficient plumbing fixtures. A sewage treatment plant recycles used water which is then channeled for use in the terrace garden, landscaped areas and water closets. Indoor plants are selected for their low water requirements. Rainwater is harvested effectively.

Energy-efficient Materials

Materials selected for use in flooring, ceilings, furniture, wall coverings, carpets, partitions and so on have been chosen for their recycled content or recyclable properties. These are also certified by their respective manufacturers as non-toxic. Similarly, low Volatile Organic Compound (Low VOC) paints, adhesives and sealants have been used to maintain a healthy indoor environment.

Waste Management

Waste will be segregated into dry waste and wet waste; dry waste will be diverted to recycling haulers while wet waste will be further processed to generate organic compost on site.

The open office plan includes modern furniture, well equipped conference halls, meeting rooms and breakout areas on every floor. Each conference room is equipped with the best in telephone conferencing, video-conferencing and overhead projectors. The spacious new canteen with a state-of-the-art kitchen, along with a mini-gym and coffee lounges on every floor further enhance the appeal of the building.

Glass Workshop Building in Tokyo – Light as Air

A new workshop building in glass has come up in Japan for upcoming engineers and scientists; it has been designed by Tokyo-based architecture firm Junya Ishigami and Associates. This is a crystalline glass building that serves as a flexible studio and workplace for students at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Tokyo. Ishigami and his team aim to create an ideal environment for KAIT students to work on self-initiated projects and build things.

This single-story glass box workshop covers an area of 21,410 sq-ft. The glass studio has a large open floor plan topped with a roof and supported by columns of various sizes. A floor-to-ceiling glass facade and strips of skylight on the roof create a spectacular work environment for design projects.

The floor-to-ceiling glass makes the building appear weightless and elegant, and the open plan preserves the building’s sense of transparency as the viewer’s eye can shoot directly across the uninterrupted space. 305 slender steel columns of various sizes support the stripped roof of skylights and are scattered all over the building in a random fashion.

The white columns and the frameless glass façade almost make the building disappear. The façades are formed by 5m×1.5m glass panels that are just 10mm thick. They are stabilised by perpendicular fins, which offer complete transparency. The column arrangement and need for elimination of partition walls allow the studio to maintain its feeling of openness.

During the day time, glass skylights above the building offer unbeatable natural light. At night when the lights are lit, the glass building shines like a star on the ground. Ceiling fixtures and task lamps enable factory-like facilities to operate long after classes end for the day.

The one-room building contains 14 freely arranged, open spaces. These include a check-in area, denoted by an Ishigami-designed, donut-shaped counter, as well as specialized areas for pottery, woodworking, computer graphics, metal casting, and other media.

There are also four multipurpose work spaces, a small supply shop, and an office-like alcove for the facility supervisors. Ishigami eschewed organizational devices, such as structural grids, proscribed circulation paths, and even walls (the closest lavatories are next door). Instead, he used rectangular columns, furniture of brown wood or white steel, freestanding HVAC units, and potted plants to modulate the whole 16-foot-high space.

To blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors, Ishigami eliminated all openings on the glass walls except for doors and a few small floor vents that draw fresh air supplied by roof vents. Inside, the columns function as abstract trees and potted greenery—each plant carefully selected by the architect—serves a bona-fide design role, not just a decorative one.

Transparency with Glass in Architecture

Buildings that use glass on their facades allow for visibility from the inside and even the outside, depending on the nature of the glass used. What makes glass the material of choice for building exteriors is properties like transparency, allowing for maximum natural light flow, solar control and sheer elegance, among others.

1. Sipoo Upper Secondary School

Sipoo Upper Secondary School / IT College, designed by K2S Architects Ltd is located in the town of Sipoo, close to Helsinki, Finland. The L-shaped pavilion-like glass building forms the last corner of an existing school campus. The urban setting is dominated by two curved yards; a larger one towards the campus garden and a smaller court yard connected to the main road. The two curved transparent glass façades don't just open up the school towards the surrounding town, but also provide view from one classroom to another and strengthen the sense of community within the school.

The street side facade is broken up into smaller volumes to relate to the scale of the surrounding villas. A cast-on-site concrete stair topped by a large conical top light forms the focal point in the central lobby space. This space forms the heart of the building, both spatially and functionally. While performing the typical functions of entrance and staircase, it also acts as a space where students can meet up when not at class. A small mediatheaque and a café in the southern wing open up towards the central lobby. The class rooms are reduced in their material palette into industrial IT-workshops.

2. Shanghai, Exterior Office Building

Shanghai, Exterior Office Building in Atelier Deshaus is a three-story building encloses a green yard with a steel and glass framework. This building simply looks like a glass box. The first floor is elevated and only houses the reception and a restaurant. We took into consideration the views not only from the interior but also from the exterior. This building looks like a cube covered with a glass curtain wall. While clearly defining the private space in the interior, the transparent glass walls also create a visual communication to the landscapes inside and outside.

In this way, the ground floor spaces flow from the central garden to the exterior landscape and an uninterrupted view goes through the building. The inside volume is surfaced with a printed glass curtain wall. Glass with “broken ice” pattern is chosen for this building. It is adopted from a kind of traditional Chinese interior decoration. The patterns nicely represents that they keep the unity, even when putting the different pieces together.

3. Theatre Agora

Theatre Agora located at in the Dutch city of Lelystad Austria. This building is mostly glass and steel shaded by an outer façade of a glittering mesh more at the nights. The appearance is impacted by changes in light as well as by proximity and viewing angles. The muted pattern on the outer mesh is repetitive and meant to symbolize the sonority repetition brings to music.

4. Sport Architecture building Siauliai arena

Sport Architecture Building is glazed with luxury glass which imparts to the building a design sophisticated look. The architects wished for it to appear as a chameleon; therefore choosing holographic glass for the facade. The facade shades change with changing lighting: in bright sunlight it looks like a vivid playful rainbow, whereas cloudy or rainy settings give it a calm and solid view.

Sizzling Glass Pyramid at Turkey

It is now well-established that glass is a construction material like no other, that imparts aesthetic as well as functional benefits to architecture in general, and to skyscrapers in particular. And within the league of architecture that uses glass, a pyramid-shaped building stands out as one that has taken a step ahead; the Sabancı Congress and Exhibition Centre in Antalya, Turkey does just that. This multi-purpose convention complex is widely known as Glass Pyramid owing to the pyramidal structure of its roof.

Architect Levent Aksüt and Yaşar Marulyalı cast this glass pyramid using metal and glass, surrounded by round-shaped decorative ponds. This structure is located inside the Hasan Subaşı Cultural Park, the complex with a total closed area of 9,000 m² on the basement and ground floor, each floor with 4,500 m² area, with access from four sides. The main hall on the ground floor is covered with a coloured thermo plane space roof, which is 23 m high and is covered with 5,710 m² of coloured titanium blue insulating glass. This titanium blue insulated glass gives a flawless look to the glass building.

Sabanci Congress and Exhibition Centre has five halls with fully air-conditioned, ideally for various national and international congresses, seminars, exhibitions and conferences.

Toros Hall

The largest of the halls has a 2,400-seat capacity with telescopic platforms when used for conferences, and an exhibition area of 2,050 square meters. The hall is equipped with multipurpose audio, lighting, and visual systems and a mobile simultaneous interpretation cabin. On the plasma screens in the hall, various graphical views and animations can be shown. Additionally, Widi Wall visual system, first time in Turkey, is available.

Meltem Hall

It has a total area of 417 square meters and 440-seat capacity and a mobile simultaneous interpretation cabin available for conferences and meetings. State-of-the-art technology is available for meeting and conference organizations.

Duden Hall

It has a total area of 307 square meters and 340-seat capacity and four fixed simultaneous interpretation cabins available for conferences and meetings.

The remaining two halls are at the exhibition centre with ach with 87 square-meter area and 50-seat capacity. These halls may be used as a meeting room, art gallery, press room, or as a cafeteria, and during the activities audio and visual transfer is possible between the halls.

Inside the glass pyramid elevators, telephones, and rest rooms for the disabled are available. The building also includes a foyer, VIP room, doctor's office, food stand, check room, service kitchen and technical units.