It was a rather bright day and Architect Rohan Parikh was in the mood. Heading Green Initiatives at Infosys could hardly be a piece of cake. Yet, when we landed at the sprawling Infosys campus in Bangalore that sunny morning, we caught Ar. Parikh in good spirits, albeit anxious to finish his scheduled session with us with minimum delay.

“Let’s go out and shoot”, he said, obviously wanting to take in a piece of the cheerful day.  We were, of course, more than happy to oblige.

High performance buildings were clearly the focus of all of Ar. Parikh’s initiatives, an end which was achieved by the use of renewable energy. “Energy saved is energy gained,” he said matter-of-factly. In view of the changing global climate, resource constraints and exploding population, he believes that buildings which can bring in a 10X improvement in the energy scarcity situation are the order of the day.

Glass was clearly one of Ar. Parikh’s favourite building materials. “Thanks to glass, architects can now not just make buildings look great, but also spend less time and effort in proportioning them”. He added that the intelligent use of glass was paramount, by ensuring that the glass used was of the high-performance category, which let in daylight but not heat.

If he likes glass, we like him. Ar. Rohan Parikh made for himself that day, a special place as Glazette’s blue-eyed boy. Or, should we say, glassy-eyed boy.