Video 3.

7: Kalpana Housing Complex, Auroville

Kalpana is a housing project situated at Auroville, an international township, in Tamil Nadu,

South India.

The objective of Kalpana is to offer a beautiful space, homelike, for community living.

Auroville is located in the southern peninsular region of the Indian sub-continent with very
hot climate and very high humidity level. The hottest months in Auroville are from April to
July when temperatures reach beyond 40 degree Celsius with high humidity levels.
Therefore, a better design is needed to overcome the discomfort it provokes.

At the origin of this specific housing project, there was a conscious decision to avoid air-
conditioning. The role of the architect was to come up with a design that would meet this
expectation. The underlying philosophy of the project aims at achieving high comfort with
low energy requirement.

This is achieved through behaviour change, climate responsive design, landscaping features,
efficient use of energy and on-site generation of solar energy. And, also by efficient planning
and management, both during the designing and construction processes. Since the
construction materials and methods are conventional, the cost achieved is same as any
other conventional construction of the similar specification, typology and scale of project.

The overall design is rooted in bio-climatic approach, which helps to minimize the heat gain
and enhanced natural ventilation. This helps in lowering the operational energy demand
throughout the life of the building.

Form and orientation are the two most effective passive design strategies which are also no-
cost. Form and orientation affect the amount of heat that goes into the building, allows
more wind to be captured, and also affects the quality of daylighting inside.

Kalpana is predominantly oriented North-South and has juxtaposed volumes which shade
most of the building at most times of the day, reducing heat gain; and the juxtaposed
volumes, the way they are oriented, also catch the breeze from various directions, taking
care of the diurnal and the seasonal changes in the wind direction. Again, as an
augmentation to the ventilation aspect, an age-old strategy of having ventilators over doors
has been introduced, which helps to flush out the heat as it is gained during the day.

Each design strategy helps reduce the heat intake or flushes out the heat that has already
gone in, and thus help in keeping the occupants comfortable throughout the hot and humid
summer. Kalpana undertook not to go for any artificial air conditioning in these buildings. A
lot of heat normally gets gained from the roofs in our climate. Vermiculite concrete has
been used in about 4-inch-thick layer with heat reflecting white tiles to reduce heat ingress
from the roofs.
Kalpana site was blessed with a lot of trees, and as architect and project holders team, we
decided to retain as many as possible, and that now provides a lot of shade for buildings as
well as for the ground. And the landscape has been designed to minimize the hard surfaces
so that the heat island effect is very much minimized as well as maximum percolation of
rainwater is ensured. All the roof surfaces and balconies, the whole site rainwater is
collected into the swale and it is percolated. The swale will be feeding a larger storage swale
where water from three neighbouring communities will also get collected together, and it
will fulfill the need for the drinking water.

An extension of the landscape goes into the private balcony and verandah where each unit
has a planter which allows plants to be very close to the homes; and it is an extension of the
living space. The balcony also has a fan which allows the space to be very comfortable,
especially during hot and humid and still days.

90% of the spaces are naturally lit. All the fenestrations have very deep overhangs. This
helps in reducing glare; it also gives diffuse light in all the spaces. Even during the rains, one
can keep the windows and doors open due to deep overhangs.

The Kalpana team chose to provide various pieces of equipment in the apartments so that
highly energy efficient equipment could be chosen. So, the fans, lights, refrigerators, are all
highly energy efficient. Purified water as well as the laundry have been provided as common
facilities.

We have also installed a grid-tied solar photovoltaic system which provides 4 hours of
power back-up. Charging points for electric bikes have been provided in the parking lot.
There is only provision for 4 cars to not encourage 4-wheel drive in Auroville. In Kalpana, we
have gone for a standard RCC frame structure and used AC blocks for both heat mitigation
and use their light-weight aspect to create large overhangs which have helped mitigate the
heat by doing mutual shading of the buildings through useful volumes, like bedrooms and
balconies.