This simple white house in Tiruchirapalli is green in spirit

LID Architects joins hands with its civil engineer client to create a comfortable, energy-efficient home.

Curated by: Rupali Sebastian
Photographs: Link Studio and Gopi Thodupunuri; courtesy LID Architects

The site

The house sits on a 40’ x 60’ rectangular north-facing site situated in a sub-tropical area where the temperature difference between low to high is around 12°c (28°c – 40°c).

The brief

The client is a civil engineer with an in-depth knowledge of construction techniques and energy modulation, and has constructed more than 4,000 houses in the region. “We gathered the inputs from the client and developed a concept that gave maximum comfort from an energy efficiency perspective,” reveals Alvin Albert, principal architect, LID Architects.

The response

In order to harvest night-time coolness, large openings have been created at the ground and first-floor roof levels with ventilators at the double-height areas to let out the hot air during daytime as it rises up due to the stack effect. This helps in constant ingress of fresh air into the building. “In order to retain the absorbed coolness during the night-time, we avoided windows at the outer periphery,” the architect tells us. “During the daytime, the temperature inside the house is 8°c cooler than outside across all seasons.”

The elevation

In the white boxes with customized steel fins on the exterior, an arithmetic representation of the house number is inscribed on a stainless-steel rotating cube. Also the words ‘House no. 26’ have been cut out on the front floating slab to create a beautiful night view projection, creating a minimal, unconventional and captivating elevation.

The highlights

The pooja room features steel letters copied from ancient temple inscriptions. A glass door salvaged from a scrapped washing machine is fixed at the front cantilevered projection of the kitchen to provide a street view for the family’s pet dog.

Green measures

Customised steel fins were deliberately designed to obstruct direct views from the outside and provide minimal vision from the inside to the outside. The external noise level is reduced due to the design pattern of these steel fins. The layer of volcanic ash has been plastered over the exposed walls, including the rooftop, while recycled furnace brick flooring is laid in the car park to avoid heat radiation. All rainwater is harvested in the sump which is provided with a measuring scale. By adopting various energy-efficient measures, the power consumption has been reduced to 350 INR per month — 60% less than what the client’s earlier home consumed. In order to adopt green building practices, this house uses a lot of discarded materials from the casting, forging and machining industries.

Fact file

Project: The Civil Engineer House
Location: Tiruchirapalli
Area: 2,830 sq ft
Principal architect: Alvin Albert
Design team: Arthi Mesiya
Concept and design development: Sathyamoorthy
Structural engineer: Kishen Patrick
Construction engineer: Pachi Raj
Tiles and design solution: Krishnan