This illegal "rooftop garden villa" tops them all

An illegal structure built on rooftop of a 26-storey residential building by an eccentric Beijing resident became one of the top news over Internet few days ago. Professor Zhang Biqing spent 6 years building what's referred to in the article as a "rooftop garden villa," with fake rocks and real vegetation above his penthouse apartment. The neighbors got concerned about the possible damage and complained to the authorities. And now the creator of this 'rooftop house' has 15 day to demolish the illegal structure.

The officials of Beijing's chengguan (meaning urban management) have issued an ultimatum to a former government advisor, demanding he tear down the sprawling structure. This rooftop garden villa is built with elaborate fake rocks, real trees and grass and some portions of the structure seems as if they could spill over the edge of the roof at any time.

When reporters of Beijing Morning News, the local newspaper confronted Zhang, he said, "Since I dare to live here, I am not worried about complaints. Famous people come to my place and sing. How can you stop them?"

Using Solar Energy For Green Buildings

As the prices to create and install solar cells continues to decrease, more and more homes and businesses are using solar power for their energy requirements. The use of solar power reduces the amount of carbon used for traditional power sources, and can decrease energy costs, therefore, solar power is gaining popularity in many parts of the world.

The solar power is actually gained by installing solar power cells. There are many different types of solar power cells but 4 of them are widely used. Crystalline silicone, ordinary silicon cells, thin film cells, and concentrator cells are commonly used. Crystalline silicone cells are the cells most commonly used in solar power plants. Just like in most semiconductors, the Crystalline silicone cells are also made from two layers, a positive layer and negative layer and when photons from the sun’s light strikes the semiconductors and released electrons, the electric field is created between the two layers. 

Photovoltaic (PV) Energy

Photovoltaic (PV) panels contain hundreds of small silicon cells that collect the sun's energy and convert it into electricity that can be used in the home or offices. With the appropriate power conversion device (inverter), these PV systems can produce alternating current (AC) compatible with any conventional appliances and operate in parallel with and interconnected to the utility grid.

Dynamic Daylighting

Many companies have also come out with smart solar solutions to increase efficient use of resources. One such solution is to control individual sections in a building such as in a floor-to-ceiling window with a hot glare in only one area, thus allowing a work or living space to use daylight rather than artificial lighting, but hold down glare at the same time, making a comfortable work space and still using less energy.

In nutshell, the sun provides an unlimited resource for power around the world and is becoming a positive energy source for people across the world to reduce their carbon footprint and save on energy expenditure.

Chimes, Gurgaon: Experience Nature Within The Spaces Of The Building

The architecture of the Chimes Building, Gurgaon symbolizes life inside the building and one can experience nature within the spaces of this building. The design of the building takes care of issues like sustainability, sociability, making room for nature, and program flexibility. A novel solution for a multi-tenanted office building with floor plate size flexibility to create a mix of tenants from various service sectors and industries, Chimes becomes a public space that is accessible and thrives at all times of the day and night.

Each floor of the building was envisioned to organize as potentially heterogeneous open-plan environments that can be combined or be separated by user requests with controlled indoor environments and amenities to suit a variety of needs for large and small businesses organized to share common community resources set up in the building. Not surprisingly, this has created a high profile address!

To maximize the use of green spaces and the views from within and outside and make use of the ground, otherwise lost to building footprint, the design places the gardens around glass-lined movement corridors and Staircase cores. You feel close to nature even when you are inside. The symbolism of the landscape and the architectural artifact are intended to enliven the whole ensemble. When you move through the spaces of the building, lift lobbies, holding areas, social spaces, cafeteria and reception which are located along the way, you realize that design has brilliantly used the idea of diverse experience of graded light and shaded spaces, landscape variation to include plant and animal life (etched into the stone surfaces), air, earth, and water as part of each of the pauses and transition experiences.

The architecture is used to develop the building marked by energy efficiency, operational convenience, low operational cost and optimized investment costs. It focuses not only on the façade, sun shading, and lighting details but above all, also on minimizing the energy consumption of the building while optimizing natural light consumption. The building is glazed on the benign North face and on shaded facades with higher performance glass responsive to the conditions. On exposed and direct heat receiving faces a solar façade of small openings set up high on the floor allow less direct heat and maximizes penetrations of light into the plate.

The building consists four interconnected floor plate blocks of varied size and scale organized around climate-modifying, natural-light-giving courtyards. These floor plates are independently equipped with amenities/facilities for all modern office requirements.

Restaurant Design: Creating Memorable Experience For Visitors And Guests

Eating has always been a sociable event. The restaurant as a hospitality institution fully emerged in the 17th century. The word “restaurant” was used in the 16th century, meaning a restorative broth, but by 1771 the term had mutated to refer to an “establishment specializing in the sale of restorative foods” as well. 

Today, it’s not just about what or where you eat, but also the how and the who that is gratified. The interiors of a restaurant has to be in sync with the food served and its provenance.

At Design Atelier, restaurant design is driven by meticulous planning and an artful eye. our innovative design teams together with the clients, carefully orchestrate architectural elements, finishes, furnishings, accessories, lighting and art to create style, image and an inviting ambiance again & again.

Design Atelier: Green Design Approach

Green design is a philosophical approach to design physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of social, economic, and ecological sustainability.

We aim to generate forward looking ideas and implementation planning related to sustaining the life cycle of buildings that live after the construction. Working with the client as a key voice, and by integrating inputs from all building utilities engineering disciplines, we provide clients with well coordinated, well conceived, cost effective and environmentally responsive solutions, that meet the future.

Interior Design: Green Accepted As Healthy

The season brings forward old ideas remodeled according to new trends, effortless elegance, vivid colors, striking and out of the ordinary combinations and contrasts. Interior design has played a vital role in property pretty much since man began living in caves. So, whats in for this season? Many Architects & Designers like Ashish Karode, Raseel Gujral, Sita Nanda, Sushil L. Karer, Manit Rastogi, Anjali Goel and many more emphasize that a pre-design process is very important for every space. 

In homes, with the dominance of the open plan, the trend is to remove isolated areas and boundaries and create a place where one area flows into another and there aren’t that many rigid definitions. Essentially, our lifestyle choices are reflecting the way we think. Here are few points worth giving attention:

GREEN ACCEPTED AS HEALTHY

The emphasis on green continues to gain momentum. While most people are well aware of the built environment’s impact on our planet, less is known about how it relates to human health. So as they are maintaining their space organically for their own better self.

SMALLER SPACES / STUDIO LIFE

Functionality is a substance and small spaces are designed in such a manner that they cater their owner to use it at its best. Gone are the days of cheaply produced mega mansions. Today design is about smaller, well planned spaces made with quality materials that will last a lifetime.

DOMINANCE OF ART

No more people want to cover the large extent of their walls, but a light colour wall with a brilliant piece of Art. Now the artists are considered a part of this trend. They have moved to walls & Ceiling from the canvas board. Lobby of Taj Hotel, in New Delhi owns a huge art of M.F.Hussain. He took many months to finish the work.

QUALITY MATERIALS DOING MORE WITH LESS

Now Leather looking Tile can’t be predicted till the time you don’t touch it but it’s easy to maintain like a tile but gives a fabulous look of leather. That’s how many materials have been developed and getting launched this year too. Higher functionality & low cost and time maintenance.

THE COZY SPACES

Leathers, tweeds, flannels and canvas fabrics are popping up all over furniture. Icons of high style like, and have turned their attention to interiors. Everything from master bedrooms, media room and living rooms, both indoors and out will be dominated by fabrics traditionally seen on large basis

The beauty of interior design as a subject and interest, there are no boundaries, form and beauty can meet in function, as long as we're talking of items for the home or workplace, which serves to fulfill a function, interior design, meets its needs.

Avoiding Modern Glass Facades In Indian Architecture

We all admire the old cities of India, especially the residential quarters that were full of buildings designed during the great era of the master builders. We all especially love the work of the great Rajasthani and Gujarati builders, where meticulous detailing and carefully placed openings created spaces that are naturally comfortable and connected to the environment. Modern buildings typically use glazed facades in an effort to bring the outdoors in. But when we are in these buildings we rarely feel comfortable, nor do we get a sense of connection with the outdoors. What are we missing here?

In the era of modern architecture, glass facades were ushered in by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and later Philip Johnson, and their contemporaries probably would not have been possible without the invention of air-conditioning. We recall modern architecture history that writes of Le Corbusier's pioneering Salvation Army building in Paris, that was comfortable when it was first occupied in the winter of 1933, but it overheated in summer and had to be retrofitted with operable windows and air-conditioning. After World War II, modern architecture ventured into buildings with deep floor plates and ceiling-mounted fluorescent lighting that all but gave up any link to what lay outside, except along their perimeters. After the oil-price shocks of the late 1970s and early 1980s, dark coatings and films were added in an effort to lower energy use, which further cut off people's connection to the outdoors.

Now we have glass coatings that can filter out more heat than light. But are they really comfortable? Developers tell us the advantages of the glamorous looking but thin skinned glass buildings are easier to lease and sell, (not the least because of the extra space they generate by avoiding walls, . But they then neglect to report that these buildings struggle with the glare and heat that come with large glass openings. Designers respond by closing shades, which kind of defeats the purpose of all that glass. And in high-rises, stimulating views are offset, for many occupants, by discomfort and vertigo—hardly the intended calming effect of a connection to nature.

In the Indian environment, we have all seen this problem over and over. In one building with floor-to-ceiling glass, the air temperature behind the south and west sides of the facade was 35 degrees centigrade as the  sun-saturated glass radiated so much heat that the only way to provide acceptable comfort was to drastically overcool the air. A broker of high-end commercial real estate told me recently that his more sophisticated tenants refuse to look at spaces with large south- or west-facing window walls.

Many Indian architects are now borrowing a page from Europe and building with narrower floor plates to allow more daylight into occupied spaces. They don't always realize, however, that when we put people closer to windows, we no longer need large floor-to-ceiling or even desk-to-ceiling window configurations. With thoughtful design of new narrow-floor-plate buildings, we think that developers could respond favourably to buildings with window-to-wall ratios as low as 25 percent.

When it comes to good window design, we can learn from buildings constructed a century ago, before the age of air-conditioning and fluorescent lights. As a community, we need to be more creative with facades, factoring in sun shading, glass type, and, yes, the amount of glazing. We can also explore other ways to bring nature into our buildings, such as material selection, live plants, and moving water. If we do these things well, we'll not only save energy; we'll also make people more comfortable and productive.

Colors in Architecture - A Guide to Students

When we like the colors in a room, we feel good in it. There is a healing, calming aspect.

- Barbara Kaplan, Interior Designer

Color scheme depends on certain concepts and these concept may depends upon the nature of space. Formal space have different color schemes while informal space may have different. Also, to impart fresh effect concept of color will be different than the ancient touch. Apart from the concept, the orientation of the room, existing finishes, furniture and the artifacts to be placed in room are also considered. Generally, for planning a color scheme, following 3 main components of shell should be considered:

- Walls, floors, ceiling

- Proportions of the room

- Balance of solids and voids

It has been noticed that people are more comfortable in room with light ceiling, medium walls and dark floors. Probably, this scheme corresponds to the color of sky, foliage and earth respectively.

If a room is very large, and if required, the effect can be subdued by using dark colors and complementary color schemes. Similarly, the use of light colors and monochromatic and analogous color schemes can make a small room appear large.

The nature of projects also influence the choice of colors. For residential areas, harmonious color schemes (monochromatic or analogous) are preferred and preferably cool colors are used on southern sides and little bit of warm colors are used on northern side (Indian context).

Monochromatic or analogous color schemes that are harmonious are preferred for residential areas. In India, generally cool colors are used on southern sides and slightly warm colors are used on northern side. Bright colors like red and yellow with complimentary color schemes are used for Nursery Schools as these colors depicts childhood. To provide stimulating and exciting effects, bright and warm colors are used for hospitality sector. Healthcare centers are painted with soothing colors like off-whites and browns.

BIM Technology Advantages

BIM Technology on the Revit Platform also known as VDC (Virtual Design and Construction) enables creating buildings as a single data set, leveraging that information to bring benefits to all parties. BIM offers the ability to update design faster, collaborate across disciplines, accurately manage work flows and significantly increases productivity. This enhances the value of design as a whole, with benefits to all from reduction in turnaround, errors and coordination. Here are 10 BIM Technology advantages:

1. Better outcomes through collaboration

2. Enhanced performance

3. Optimized solutions

4. Greater predictability

5. Faster project delivery

6. Reduced safety risk

7. Fits first time

8. Reduced waste

9. Whole life asset management

10. Continual improvement

Zero-energy buildings - A reality now!

Experts believe that all commercial buildings, by the year 2050, will be “net zero”. Net Zero buildings are capable of producing as much energy as they use over the period of a year. Many green buildings experts, however, says that net zero homes are not merely a thing of the future and any building can be transformed into a net zero home with some investment and advanced energy technology.

If you are planning to own or build home of your own, then there is no reason not to select net zero house plans. People in net zero homes enjoy drastically reduced energy bills and are less dependent on the local grid in the case of an emergency.

Reducing energy consumption and generating power on site are two basic steps required in building net zero homes. Creating a tight building envelope and installing energy-efficient lighting, heating and appliances helps in reducing energy consumption. Also, HVAC systems allow to live comfortably on a third of the energy required for an average code-built home.

A combination of photo-voltaic  solar thermal, geothermal and wind generates on-site power for net zero buildings. Net zero status is earned when as much power has been pushed back to the grid as was used on site.