For the love of building and building green

Here is a great episode of the UK show “Grand Designs’ tracking the story of building a sustainable home in Cumbria. In this case the home is built underground to keep it insulated and the result is that the house functions all year round without the need for any mechanical heating or cooling. Which is pretty amazing considering the extreme weather in that region.

Even though the house from the video and Nivim are very different, there were still many similarities…We have ourselves tried some new elements, materials and construction techniques in the house. Builders in India are so used to doing construction the same way they did in 1970s that anything new freaks them out. But really we are building in 2010 people, so please, we can do better than a generic concrete structure with piddly-little windows, a sloping RCC roof made to look like a wood and tile roof and luxury being defined as the use of Italian marble….

Not to mention of course the similarities in material delivery issues, fussing over waterproofing and of course construction delays and some more delays.. In the video, at one point they show that after 12 weeks, the house has its first floor concrete done…. Wassatttt…. Let me see now, where were we at week 12…not really out of the ground I think ;)

I love the sun pipes and the wind turbine in the project. I wonder what it would take to get a permit for something like that in Goa ??

As they say ‘building green is the new black’. But that is not the right reason for anyone to go the green way, the right reason is because one must respect nature and the land where one is building. In Goa, we are building green in the hope to preserve the state’s blissful green environs and biodiversity for our future generations to enjoy.