The girls’ hostel block of the St. Andrews Institute of Technology and Management by Zero Energy Design Lab in Gurugram relates to the adjacent boy’s hostel and is constructed of exposed brick and concrete, with exposed structural members adjacent to the structure along all sides. The hostel houses approximately 130 female students, with rooms on four levels, plus ancillary spaces such as the canteen, recreational areas and communal areas. The ground floor comprises twelve double rooms and a double-height reception area.

The building has been designed to incorporate indoor and outdoor spaces that connect physically and visually at different levels to enhance social interactions and activities. In addition, the entrance foyer and atrium are designed as outdoor spaces that face west and are connected to the cafeteria so that students can enjoy evenings outside in the greenery.

The building develops as a series of multidimensional spaces, arranged in hierarchical order through the method of adaptive layering.
When students move from the interior of the building to the outdoors, they experience transitions into different thermal environments. The ground floor lounge is located next to the landscaped courtyard and the adjacent inner courtyard has dense planting to reduce heat through evaporative cooling.

From the core of the building outwards, the next transition is the second floor terrace along the west facade of the building that attracts students in the mornings and late evenings in summer and serves as a gathering space throughout the day in winter. The next transition zone in the heart of the building is a staircase, incorporated in the south facade, which connects all floors. Transition and circulation spaces such as bridges open into lounges and breakout spaces for socialising and group study. The outdoor area of the atrium often serves as a badminton court in the evening and the courtyard hosts frequent carrom matches.

With limited space available along the hostel’s northern facade, a double-skin facade was developed to create a semi-permeable layer to help provide shade and regulate temperature through controlled airflow. The outer facade screen is made of pigmented concrete blocks. The blocks managed to solve three problems. They provide adequate thermal mass to absorb heat, and with a depth of eight inches, direct radiation must penetrate through many layers within the block and is reflected off several surfaces several times before entering the interior, reducing glare. Also, because the block is penetrable, the volume of air passing through this mass loses heat through compression based on Bernoulli’s principle.

The blocks are also slightly rotated at a specific angle based on the analysis of insulation versus solar heat gain. The double skin facade acts as a thermal mass and has reduced mechanical cooling loads by 35%, a marked increase over the ECBC (Energy Conservation Building Code) base case for public buildings. 

The shaded courtyard houses a variety of plants that require less exposure to the sun. The peripheral areas feature bamboo creating a screen. Outside the building, champa trees with their large canopies have been planted for sitting in the shade. The surface of the outdoor courtyard is open to facilitate the penetration of water into the ground. Waste water, such as that from the toilets, is conveyed to the waste water treatment plant and reused for horticultural purposes.