I N S P I R A T I O N : Concepts

Inspiration's office, Ernakulam

Probably the first and largest of engineered bamboo structures in India and First Prize winner in the Office Buildings category of International Bamboo Building Design Competition, the office covering an area of 2750 Sft was built in 2002, and stands testimony to the vision of Inspiration to create ‘ a centre for evolving sustainable design solutions so as to contribute toward an ecologically sensitive and green future'. Almost a third of the bamboo used in the building has been grown and taken from the site itself.

The building is a framed structure designed for a loading condition of approx. 400kg per sq.m live load and to withstand wind speeds of up to 200 km per hour. The basic advantage is that because bamboo is a light material, the entire dead weight of the building has been reduced to almost 1/3 rd of a similar building done with conventional RCC slabs and masonry walls. The cement and steel consumption has been brought down by 70%.

The bamboo species used is Dendro Calamus Strictus. The infill roof, floor and walls of the office are constructed using externally attached bamboo-micro reinforced mortar composite.

Other ecologically sensitive practices that have gone into in the making of the building and premises include
•	Waste timber and recycled steel has been used for building workshop sheds.
•	In an attempt to minimize river sand mining and its consequences which is a serious ecology issue in kerala, manufactured sand and premix plaster is used in the entire building.
•	Precast Ferro cement beams have been used as alternative to RCC beams
•	where ever possible. This not only reduces the use of steel but contributes to reduction is self weight of building.
•	All furniture is made of either crafted cane, hard wood or treated recycled packing case wood rejects from the seaport.
•	The office has been designed with natural lighting and cross ventilation for all spaces, thus minimizing use of fans/ lights and air conditioners.
•	A three level sewage and waste water treatment system (DEWATS) treats sewage and waste water to acceptable standards. This treated waste water is used for irrigation.
•	Sub-surface filter drains using poly-propylene geo-fabrics, stone, pebbles and perforated pipes drain the storm water so as to recharge the natural pond and well in the premises.
•	Besides this, there is an artificially created rain harvesting pond which becomes a landscape feature. This has been built using impermeable clay layer as the base, jute- PE lining to hold the clay in position and dry rubble pitching over this to protect the PE layer from UV radiation. The sub-surface drains feed this pond too and the overflow from this is let out to road side storm water drains.
•	Solid organic wastes which decompose are segregated into three categories, a) vegetable and food wastes – these go to a biogas plant. b) meat, bones, oily or spicy food waste etc. which are more difficult to decompose are digested in the baffled reactor c) leaves, twigs from plants and trees and saw dust and other wood wastes from workshop have larger bulk and are subject for aerobic composting.
•	Inorganic wastes like plastics, glass, metal wastes etc. are segregated and given for recycling.