ADVISORY BOARD
SOAPBOX
20
Dikshu C. Kukreja
Namita Singh
Sanjay Puri
Bo Boje Larsen
Karan Grover
Prof. Mustansir Dalvi
Manit Rastogi
Conrad Gonsalves
Sandeep Khosla
Varun Kohli
CN Raghavendran
Jurgen Wolf
Niranjan Hiranandani
TALL PROMISES THE SOAPBOX IS AN OPPORTUNITY FOR EACH OF OUR ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS TO EXPRESS THEIR OPINION ON AN IMPORTANT INDUSTRY ISSUE. THIS MONTH, REZA KABUL SHARES THE CHALLENGES IN BUILDING HIGH-RISES IN INDIA AND HIS VIEWS ON THE POLICY CHANGES EXPECTED TO EASE THE PROCESS IN FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS. HE ALSO DISCUSSES THE ESSENTIAL FRAMEWORK FOR CREATING A SELF-SUSTAINING HIGH-RISE.
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REZA KABUL director ARK Reza Kabul Architects
hen Philip Johnson stated that ‘doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper’, he probably did not have to deal with the unending approvals that we are required to attain in India. Cities across India are witnessing immense demographic expansion, leading to an urban sprawl, increased demand for housing and rise in land costs. High-rises hold the potential to decongest the urban sprawl. Currently, any structure that exceeds 70m requires the special approval of the high-rise committee. There have been several instances where developers have restricted their project height to below 70m to avoid going to the high-rise committee, as it leads to delay in the entire approval process by six months to a year. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) recently proposed to redefine the height from the current 70m to 120m. If implemented, this would ease the approval process and give a boost to the redevelopment projects that are planned with larger open spaces and other amenities. The civic chief would hold the authority to approve structures that rise 40 storeys high, as opposed to the earlier 23 storeys – roughly doubling the number of units that each structure could accommodate. It would also facilitate shorter construction spans and help maintain the excessive overheads on the cost of land. Right from Shreepati Arcade, our 153 m high-rise completed back in 2002, to our upcoming 383m tower Altitude, we at ARK have been passionate about going vertical and becoming a part of the global high-rise culture. While the Indian real-estate industry has crossed its infancy stage when it comes to high-rise structures, only a select few developers and architects have mastered the complexities involved in the design. Three key aspects that we always emphasise while designing a high-rise are the incorporation of services, traffic management and self-sustainability. The core of a high-rise tower includes a mix of services which are both ancillary and mutually exclusive. These include the air-conditioning plants, water tanks, pumping rooms, waste
ARCHITECT and INTERIORS INDIA | NOVEMBER 2016 | www.architectandinteriorsindia.com
management, generator sets, heat pumps, vertical turbines, meter rooms, electrical panels, HVAC ducts, elevator shafts, service elevators, fire safety equipment, refuge levels, surveillance and closed-circuit cameras, as well as digital connectivity including telephone, television and internet. It is an unfortunate aspect that storage and disposal of garbage is badly handled in high-rises as well as low-rises in India. Even today, we employ archaic ways instead of upgrading to the use of disposal chutes and segregation of garbage. Planning, along with interspersed service levels and a sizeable amount of skilled manpower, would ensure efficient and smooth functioning of high-rise buildings. Traffic management is an essential consideration, as it defines the time taken for a user to travel vertically. This is attained easily in a single-use high-rise structure such as a completely residential or completely commercial structure with high-speed and double-decker elevators servicing different levels of the tower simultaneously. However, in the case of a mixed-use high-rise structure such as a mix between residential and commercial, it is essential to service the different sets of users without overlapping or causing inconvenience to the other. The planning begins right from the approach to the tower, to the waiting and lift lobbies, to travelling the vertical distances. Though high-rise structures are known to consume a large chunk of resourses, a good ergonomically-designed structure can be self-dependent for its energy requirements. Sustainability in tall buildings is encouraged by the mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Ways to do that include the use of solar and wind energy to generate electricity for public areas; sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions; efficient façade cladding to maintain lower temperatures on the inside; energy servers that produce electricity from biological sources; systematic waste disposal; in-house water treatment and recycling facilities. I’m very optimistic about high-rises as a building typology that is suited to the future. Recently, vertical mixed-use developments have presented themselves as a phenomenon, with potential and advantages over the typical single-use structures making them the next step for sprawling urban cities. A&I