My OperaApartments by BCIL
Friday, May 9, 2008 2:19:02 AM
In 2004, Hariharan, CEO of BCIL decided to build three-storey apartment blocks instead of individual homes. “You cannot stop the Armageddon of development,” he says. “The turning point came to me when I heard a speech at the National Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA). Somebody said: The cities of the world occupy two per cent of the landmass, house 50 per cent of the population and consume 75 per cent of natural resources. Then I knew that we had to get into apartment blocks that consume less.” For the T-Zed project, the tiniest details including knobs and the depth of plaster were designed and documented. A brief document was drawn up after extensive meetings with two architects. “I am poor at delegating. There is a thin line between delegating and abdicating,” he says. The design for a third project, Red Earth, is being done in-house. “We now create good for construction (GFC) drawings that any builder can do,” explains Hariharan. “BCIL maps the risks. We ask what can go wrong and have mitigation plans.” He dismisses notions that green buildings are expensive to make.
