KARACHI: Even some inexpensive measures can help make indoors cool and comfortable in hot summer days. For instance, painting the exterior walls of a building white or in any other light colour, keeping inverted clay pots on the rooftop or simply putting clay tiles on the top, using insulation material available in the market for roofs and walls, using shading devices on windows and installing LED (light emitting diodes) lights, which consume less energy and emit little heat, can be quite effective.
These suggestions were shared by experts while responding to Dawn’s questions about how the existing or yet-to-be-built structures in the city could be made environment friendly and energy efficient.
According to these experts, climate-responsive architecture can be achieved by respecting the wind direction during site planning, understanding the sun path to create optimum shaded spaces, preventing direct sun on rooftops and walls, providing optimum inlet for natural wind, keeping the plan form simple and choice of appropriate techniques to withstand conduction, convection and radiation effects.
“In my opinion, environment-friendly construction is based on ‘minimalism’ which is about building spaces and using building material to the minimum possible extent.
‘Kitchen waste water can be collected in separate drums and used in gardening after some treatment’
“Whenever and wherever possible, we must rely on the power and capacity of natural elements such as landscaping and vegetation to achieve our design objectives,” said Prof Noman Ahmed, dean of the faculty of architecture and management sciences at NED University, when asked about the basic idea behind environment-friendly constructions.
Old architecture
Elaborating further, he said that if someone desired to have external shaded spaces around the home then creating wooden pergolas with creeper plants could be a better alternative than a concrete slab or a metallic projection.
“Additionally, materials that possess capacity to mitigate the extreme climatic effects should be preferred. For example, in places which brave very warm summers, wood and stone could be useful. Alternative industrial materials with the same properties may also be effective,” he said.
He suggested that some concepts followed in old buildings, for instance, keeping ceilings high and maintaining insulation in walls, helped in maintaining optimum air circulation and keeping interiors cool.
Asked about how much the city’s concrete development contributed to hot weather conditions, Prof Ahmed said that unplanned urban sprawl in the suburbs had deprived Karachi of the possibility of promoting urban forestry and agriculture that most master plans for the city had suggested.