EDIFICES
BLUEPRINTS FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
EDIFICES
BLUEPRINTS FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
Authors
Prof. Rajan Rawal
Dr. Yash Shukla
With contributions from
Nagahari Krishna Lokanadham
Vivek Nair
Graphics and Layout
Index
Exemplar Edices
06
An Introduction
Vector Vibe
February 2020
Please cite this document as
Rawal, R., Shukla, Y. (2020). Exemplar Edices: Blueprints for a Sustainable Future. CEPT Research and
Development Foundation (CRDF), India and Danfoss, India.
Disclaimer
CRDF and Danfoss do not accept any responsibility for any possible errors in this compendium. The
contents are not guaranteed to be complete, correct, timely, current or up-to-date. The views/analysis
expressed in this document are purely based on the data provided by the building stakeholders at the
time of their nomination to ACREX Hall of Fame. All images are copyright to the respective owners.
© CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF)
CEPT University, K.L. Campus, Navarangpura, Ahmedabad 380 009, India
© Danfoss Industries Private Limited
Plot No. A-19/2, SIPCOT Industrial Growth Center
Oragadam Village, Sriperumbudur 602 105, Kancheepuram District, India
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Champions of Sustainability
Buildings from ACREX Hall of Fame
The Blueprint
Showing the Way Forward
Recommendations for
High-Performance Buildings of the Future
Printed on 100% recycled paper
FOREWORDS
The world is heading for tougher times with urbanization picking up pace and its
contribution towards energy footprint gaining with every passing day. With the
growing urbanization and fast depleting resources come a growing demand for
energy ecient and sustainable solutions, suitable for modern infrastructures.
The ACREX Hall of Fame is an eort to recognise iconic commercial buildings
that not only meets the above needs, but also raises the bar on Energy Eciency
and Sustainability and sets global benchmarks. We hope that the recognition
received by these projects will inspire others in the HVAC industry to adopt these
benchmarks.
We are delighted to partner with CEPT Research and Development Foundation
(CRDF) to bring together this compendium. In CEPT, we found a perfect partner
from the realm of academia and research that shares the same focus on commercial
buildings and brings in synergies as that of Danfoss. This collaboration between
academia and industry aims to bring forward the best practices in the industry.
We believe that this compendium will be a source of inspiration, and provide
guiding principles and valuable insights to stakeholders in the industry in making
their future projects greener and more energy ecient.
Buildings in India consume close to 40% of the nation’s total energy today. We
spend more than 80% of our life indoors in buildings – this number is about 90%
for Europe and North America. Thus, energy conservation in buildings becomes a
cornerstone of any sustainable development strategy and eorts. Further, more
than 40% of the energy consumed in a building is by the building HVAC system.
Therefore, to provide a focus on this aspect of sustainable development eorts,
ISHRAE in association with Danfoss India launched the ACREX Hall of Fame initiative
in 2015. This initiative recognizes iconic buildings with highly ecient HVAC
systems through a process of nomination and selection by an elite panel of jurists.
As part of an eort to provide learnings from the last 4 years of the program,
Danfoss India in collaboration with the CEPT in Ahmedabad instituted a study to
analyze the HVAC system data from the 26 buildings that were shortlisted for nal
consideration by the Jury. This report is a comprehensive presentation of this study
through illustrative graphics, charts and visuals.
I congratulate Danfoss India for commissioning this study and the team at CEPT
for undertaking this study. I am condent that the information presented in this
report will be of immense benet to builders, architects, HVAC system designers,
contractors and facility managers, and contribute to the growing trend of energy
ecient HVAC systems in buildings in the country.
Ravichandran Purushothaman
President, Danfoss Industries Private Limited
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EXEMPLAR EDIFICES Blueprints for a Sustainable Future
Sushil K Choudhury
Presidential Member - ISHRAE and Chair - ACREX India 2020
Exemplar
With great growth, comes a great need
“
for power. And now, more than any other
Edices
Blueprints for a
Sustainable Future
time in our planet’s history, we need to
act swiftly to save our future. As more and
more people spend time inside commercial
buildings worldwide, as well as in India, the
buildings have to maximise their energy
eciency. The best starting point to increase
the number of commercial buildings that
are high on sustainability is to replicate the
success that has already been achieved.
Therefore, we’ve created a compendium of
the most energy ecient and sustainable
commercial buildings of India that can be
used as a blueprint for the future. Read on to
follow in their footsteps.
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A Time
for Change
With the dynamic proliferation of technology into our daily
lives, our buildings are bound to change synchronously.
The buildings of today are becoming increasingly complex
organisms to design and operate, their varied functions
call for the usage of non-congruous materials as well as
construction and operation strategies. In the process of
creating and living in these complex dwellings, our reliance
on energy in the form of electricity is the utmost. Despite
facilitating our daily lives by leaps and bounds, it is the same
energy which is pushing our planet to the brink of a ‘climate
catastrophe’.
The energy supplied to our grids, largely by fossil fuel-based
plants, comes at the cost of incessant greenhouse gas
emission into the atmosphere. In the context of buildings,
these direct and indirect emissions are not limited to energy
usage alone but spread out to every resource utilized in the
making of a building. This includes the emissions associated
with extracting, manufacturing, procuring, installing, and
disposal of any materials used in a building.
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EXEMPLAR EDIFICES Blueprints for a Sustainable Future
Therefore, in order to be truly
‘sustainable’, the buildings must be
well-designed using low-embodied
energy materials and methods, and
ultimately operated judiciously by
the occupants.
Passive design strategies are one of the most eective and
inherently aordable emission reduction methods. These
strategies have been popularly romanticized to not require
active methods of conditioning at all, which is incorrect. Instead,
a passively-designed building judiciously uses the form and
fabric of the structure to take the maximum possible advantage
of the natural forces of the sun and wind. This includes spatial
strategies like the stack eect, night ventilation, cross-ventilation,
etc., along with construction strategies like appropriately
placed thermal masses, cavity walls, exterior shading, etc. These
strategies, coupled with ecient active conditioning devices,
lead to reduced emissions, without compromising on the
occupants’ comfort.
It is important to categorize the buildings not just on their
function or morphological typology, but also on their mode of
operation. A building can be operated on – natural ventilation,
mixed-mode ventilation, and active air-conditioned ventilation.
Naturally ventilated buildings completely rely on the outdoor air
to oer cooling to the indoors using passive design strategies,
without using any mechanical cooling.
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EXEMPLAR EDIFICES Blueprints for a Sustainable Future
Air-conditioned buildings maintain the
indoors separated from the outdoors and use
active heating/cooling devices to maintain
comfort conditions, irrespective of the
outdoors. The balance lies within the mixedmode buildings, which can be operated in
the two aforementioned modes.
Mixed-mode ventilation can be further
classied as temporal mixed-mode, spatial
mixed-mode, and concurrent-mixed
mode. Temporal mixed-mode allows the
variation between natural ventilation and
air-conditioning with respect to time – the
time of day which experiences excessively
high outdoor temperature can be allocated
to air-conditioned operation of the building,
while during the time when the outdoor
temperature remains moderated, the
same space can be operated in a naturally
ventilated mode.
Spatial mixed-mode allows specic zones
of the building to be air-conditioned while
keeping the other zones naturally ventilated,
and concurrent mixed-mode keeps a zone
conditioned using natural ventilation and airconditioning simultaneously. This indicates
that the path to devising an energy ecient
ventilation strategy for a building is
non-linear.
Energy ecient or high-performance
buildings use less energy in comparison to
conventionally designed buildings by the
means of including sophisticated features
from the envelope to the individual
building systems.
Therefore, it is not one, but a multitude of
subsystems, materials, operation strategies,
and equipment, which might require a
relatively higher initial investment, but
ensure energy savings in the long run.
The variety of occupants’ walks of life,
economic backgrounds, and acclimatization
patterns provides each of them a unique
denition of what thermal comfort really
is. In a case this diverse, providing a linear
solution by drawing boxes around specic
indoor climatic conditions is bound to cause
user dissatisfaction. Building operation
codes and models should not recommend
the operation of an air-conditioner when
the outdoor air temperature is within the
comfortable band. The thermal comfort
models devised for subjective respondents
representing a specic region, should not be
chosen for regions with a drastically dierent
climatic context.
In order to help mitigate the eects of the
climate catastrophe from the viewpoint
of buildings, it is important for us, as a
society, to evaluate, create the ideal thermal
comfort models, and replicate the same
so as to reduce energy footprint. This
includes the evaluation of unconventional
building design, construction, and
operation practices, and bringing them to
the mainstream as scientically validated
approaches to making energy
ecient buildings.
The communication
about such approaches
should revolve around the
environment and economics
and specically target
three facets
We must arm ourselves with the validated
““
tools of science to tackle the climate crisis,
for our buildings must respond to the
changing times, and the times to come
are indisputably sustainable.
Enhancing occupant
behavior and well-being
Reduction
in load
Reduction
in consumption
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EXEMPLAR EDIFICES Blueprints for a Sustainable Future
Champions
of Sustainability
Buildings from
ACREX Hall of Fame
“
This compendium presents a brief
analysis of the twenty-six (26) exemplary
buildings shortlisted as nalists to the
ACREX Hall of Fame between 2016 and
2019. The objective of the compendium
is to extract key ndings from the
selected buildings and develop a
valuable resource on high performance
buildings for designers, consultants,
and facility managers.
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