Interview With Ar R Nagalingam, Principal Architect, Larsen And Toubro

Project: Cognizant IT Park, MEPZ, Tambaram

Few architects try to use symbolism in their buildings, especially symbols that are relevant to the people who’re going to live in or work in that building. R Nagalingam is one such architect who believes symbols are important – because people should identify with their workspace. “We wanted to do something unique with the build-form,” says Nagalingam.

“Since it is an IT park, we came up with the concept of using the binary code as the windows.” So now zeros and ones bring light into the building much as they do in the IT industry. But there’s more symbolism to be uncovered. “The 1st, 5th and 7th rows of the windows on the second building are in red,” he points to the front wall of the building under construction. “These represent C, T & S in the binary code,” he grins. Nagalingam decided to use punched-in windows in the construction. “During the daytime all the glass on these windows are shaded because they’re set into the wall. This brings in light and cuts out the heat,” he says.

Nagalingam wants to apply for a Leed Silver Rating for the IT Park once it’s complete. So energy efficiency and abiding by the ECBC norms becomes very important. Hence the use of high performance double insulated glass, which cuts out heat and noise. “The glass we used is of 6 mm thickness, with 12 mm air gap and another glass of 6 mm thickness,” he says. “Blue-green colour gives the maximum efficiency, so we chose that. It has high visible transmission ratio so people working in the building can see the outdoors clearly. Daylight is very important nowadays because studies have shown that productivity increases if workers are exposed to daylight,” he says. Only glass allows that. High performance glass also helps reduce the load on the air conditioning system because it cuts out the heat. To this glass façade, he added sunshades in the form of aluminium louvers, which shade the glass and help cut out glare inside the building.

Nagalingam has some tips for would-be architects. First check the visible transmittance of the glass, that is how much light is entering the building. “Next, look at solar factor,” he says. “Solar factor is a measure of the amount of heat from the sun that enters the building.” This will help decide the U-value of the glass to be used in the building. “India is a tropical country and ECBC norms stipulate that solar factor should be between 0.2 to 0.25. Visible transmittance can be between 40-60%. U-value should be 2 to 2.5 watts per metre squared degree Kelvin,” he says.

On green buildings, he says the World Green Building Council and the Indian Green Building Council, both say recyclable materials should be used in buildings. “Glass helps get points on that because 10-20% of recyclable content is used in the making of glass. Also nowadays waste glass is being put into the glass manufacturing process, so glass is now 100% recyclable,” he adds. Green building norms also stipulate that regional materials must be used. So materials should be procured from within 500 miles from the project site.

“We chose Saint Gobain glass because their factory is only 50-60 kms away from the project site, so we managed to get some points on that as well,” he smiles.
Nagalingam says it is important to use glass intelligently as the misuse of glass could produce glare inside the building. “But if used properly,” he says, “glass is a terrific material with a huge number of advantages.”