The design reputes with passive and active energy resources, water harvesting methods and careful use of all resources to create an environment worthy of the possibilities of building in hot arid Latur.

In the parched, hot innards of Maharashtra is the town of Latur – famous for its sugar production and more recently infamous for drought.

​

Our Clients – a sugar production facility, wants to build a research and training centre for better agricultural practices– and better facilities for their staff.  The administrative research center architecture design should be environmentally completely sustainable – utilizing the best practices for building in these climatic and soil conditions.  Latur being hot and dry, openings are small, walls thick, small courtyards that create convection currents and stone and brick as building materials are common.  The soil being largely black cotton and the cost of stone construction being too high, our first quest was for the correct building material – insulating and from the local area.  We chose CSEB made largely out of the waste quarry dust from stone and aggregate mines.

Industrial campus of a sugar factory

Hunnarshala from Kutch helped with the initial research and will make the CSE Blocks.  Then came the search for a language that also evolved from the solid facades with small shaded openings.  However, the historical use of the arch, the scale of shaded courtyards, and streets were also researched in generating a master plan for a set of buildings that will become the core or the magnet for the 100-acre industrial campus of the sugar factory.