Heat insulation

An eco-friendly concept for innovative buildings

Heat insulation: Bayer MaterialScience is constructing an Innovation Center near New Delhi which is the first of its kind on the Indian subcontinent and beyond. The building was planned around the unusual idea that it is better to adapt the building to the climate than the climate to the building. It’s a concept that can be used in climate zones throughout the world

Visionary: BMS expert Rüdiger Utsch is convinced by the concept.

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Visionary: BMS expert Rüdiger Utsch is convinced by the concept.

Temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius in the shade are nothing out of the ordinary during the summer in Greater Noida, a town in northern India where Bayer MaterialScience (BMS) has established a polyurethane systems house. People in offices, factories and apartments have to turn up their air-conditioning systems as far as they’ll go if they want to feel comfortable in a climate like this. But life without air-conditioning isn’t much fun at any time of the year, because average annual temperatures in this commuter town are around 25 degrees Celsius.

Many people have trouble understanding why anybody would want to construct an office building with almost no air-conditioning in this hot region. It won’t work, is what most people think. “It most certainly will,” says Dietmar Riecks. Riecks, an architect from Bochum, derives his confidence from the successful work he has done in the past. He has been planning and constructing zero-emissions buildings for over a decade.

This expertise was what led Bayer MaterialScience to commission the team of architects at Banz & Riecks to plan the Innovation Center. The complex comprises an office building with a usable area of 1,200 square meters for 50 employees and a display hall with a floor area of around 1,000 square meters. If everything goes according to plan, the building should be inaugurated in mid-2009. The office complex is the first project to be implemented under the “EcoCommercial Building” initiative, a future-oriented component of Bayer’s climate program. “This initiative is based on the principle of bringing together the best materials, systems and technologies in order to construct a building to suit the local climatic conditions,” explains Rüdiger Utsch, the BMS expert responsible for the project.

In the past, the principle of building in harmony with the climate was frequently neglected in industrial construction. “Instead,” Utsch continues, “standard, established types of building were equipped with air-conditioning, in some cases with a massive expenditure of energy, in order to create a pleasant indoor climate in extreme environments.”

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Sustainable construction: EcoCommercial Buildings can be implemented in both desert regions and cold climates.

The expert team that planned the first EcoCommercial Building – comprising Riecks, Utsch, experts from Bayer Technology Services and energy specialists from the company solares bauen – took a completely different approach. “Usually the architect supplies a design and the materials and technology have to be adapted to suit. We did it the other way round,” Utsch says. The experts spent two years looking at a multitude of issues with the help of simulation software. Where should the building be located? How will it be used? How many people will work in it? What sort of temperatures are likely over a two-year period?

The answers to these four questions (in a hot region, as an office building, about 50, and up to 45 degrees Celsius) were ultimately what determined the architecture of the building. “Riecks and his team used the data from the simulation to plan a building that uses 70 percent less energy than conventional buildings in the region,” Utsch explains. “That means about 35 kilowatt-hours per square meter per year.” And that level of consumption is low enough to make the InnovationCenter an ultra-low-energy building.

The photovoltaic array on the roof makes it a zero-emissions building. “The remaining energy needed to operate the building will be obtained from regenerative resources rather than from oil or gas,” Utsch says.
The company is willing to invest to make its building an ultra-low-energy construction. Utsch comments, “It is around five percent more expensive than a standard building.” The photovoltaic modules increase the cost by a further 15 percent or so, but in a hot country like India it will take less than ten years to recoup this investment.

Utsch is already confident that the concept will be a success. “The simulation technology enables us to plan and construct zero-emissions buildings for the various climate zones.” Five designs for different countries have already been produced, and Utsch is set to take them on tour. His goal is to find partners who are also keen to get involved in protecting the climate. They don’t necessarily have to be part of the Bayer Group because, as Utsch explains, “the concept is also an interesting proposition for other companies.”