Kurt Archer

Renewable action in practise before my eyes.

I had the pleasure of visiting Teri Gram estate today in Gurgaon, which is on the outskirts of Delhi. It is a project of The Energy and Research Institute (TERI) foundation, which began under the patronage of Ratan Tata in the 1970s. It is now under the leadership of Dr. Pauchauri, noble laureate winner for sustainability.

The campus is literally in the middle of nowhere, which symbolizes its removal from urban waste societies, but what a retreat it was indeed. Upon arrival, I was given an electronic car which resembled a CNG rickshaw, green in colour obviously. We passed by golf courses, cricket fields and lush vegetation. The retreat itself was a very modern design with high end facilities. Its primary source of light was from the sun, and it had no air-conditioning. In fact, this facility produces no waste.

I got a guided tour of the facility which began with looking at the structure itself, its energy efficient design, its use of wind-air ducts that run 4 meters below the earth and is cooled and shot up through the building with the use of fans.  To complement this invention, warm air ducts run up the building so that when the cold air enters the room there is somewhere for the warm air to go. The idea first emerged in ancient Greece and is now something taught in elementary science – hot air rises! So why have contemporary builders not heard of this concept? Got me.

We then visited the waste disposal center, or maybe I should say the waste garden. Here, human excrement is dumped into a pond where plants of the phramites austravlis family grow. These plants stand about 2-3 meters high out of the water, the genius is in the roots, as these are water plants, they actually consume all of the bio-waste, essentially cleaning it and leaving behind clean water. Currently most of that water is used to water the garden and golf course, however some is taken and purified even further so that it actually becomes drinkable. Imagine turning our sewage ducts back into our own drinking water system.

From here I was taken to see their biomass gasification unit, this is the source of most of their power, and it comes from wood chips and bio-mass pellets. Here the pellets are burnt at temperatures of 1200ºC, and the gas is then turned into power generation, or thermal heating which heats water canisters that provide hot water for the campus. There is a small degree of thermal heat loss that occurs, and right now they are experimenting with an addition that will dry the wood chips and thus reduce the moisture to make the system more effective.

The trip ended at a tissue culture plantation where they use GMO plants to replicate thousands of species of plants for commercial use. The admit that they are not working toward biodiversity, but that their product is scattered all over the place and that it wont impact natural eco-systems. As long as they are not creating entire forests out of this replicated genome, they should not have a negative impact on eco-systems. Seems legitimate enough, I’d like to hear your opinion.

This model is definitely a best case practise in architectural genius, and one can only hope that this made in Asia solution can spread to architectural schools all over the continent.

Visit the gallery here to see photos of the entire visit.

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