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Spiretec Competition
Greater Noida
Dehli
India

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With Ranald Lawrence, Yun Wu and Patrick Fleming

http://www.spireteccompetition.com/

With a site area of roughly 17,000 square metres and a brief of 62,750 square metres, there is the potential to create a generous interior landscape while concentrating the main office and residential development into efficient high-density cores.  Our idea creates much needed inhabitable urban space for Greater Noida by the creation of an immense sky-roof.  This sky-roof mitigates the overpowering summer sun, and establishes a warm interior microclimate in the coldest months of winter through the evaporative downdraught effect of a traditional stepped well.  The well also gives access to the existing underground car-parking.

The project’s strategic objective is to create a new public indoor-outdoor space.  The occupants’ perceived environmental quality is improved by exploiting the benefits of passive thermal comfort theory and adaptive opportunity.  The typology of a roofed public forum as an intermediate environment provides shelter to a range of smaller buildings with more controlled environments that are adapted for their specific functions (residential accommodation, hotel or office space).  This unique public space satisfies the desire for environmental diversity in what could otherwise be an oppressive world of air-conditioned indoor spaces and harsh exteriors.  The moderating effect of the roof on the temperature inside has several benefits: it would be unnecessary to employ any additional heating in winter, and in summer, the use of air conditioning would be only needed in areas of high thermal gain from major IT infrastructure.  These benefits cut energy consumption significantly whilst improving the experience of the space.

The roof is constructed using traditional low-energy timbrel vaulting methods, with permanent formwork exploiting the inherent strength in double-curvature shell structures.  This proposal represents an ambitious passive environmental design for an uncertain climatic future, learning from the lessons of the past and realised in the dynamic context of the India of today.