PUMA

Bengaluru, India

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THE SUMMIT

PUMA

Bengaluru, India

Firm

Studio Decode

Type

Commercial › Retail

STATUS

Built

YEAR

2012

SIZE

10,000 sqft - 25,000 sqft

BUDGET

$100K - 500K

RETAIL AND Zero Energy
PUMA’S FIRST GLOBAL INITIATIVE IN SUSTAINABLE BUILDING

a. Prelude:
First of it’s kind in the history of the 89 year old German multinational company The Sustainable Puma Store at Bangalore, India is their first ZERO ENERGY flagship store globally. It incorporates a number of innovative design elements to ensure that it meets the highest criteria for Energy Efficiency.

The standalone Puma building is around 11000 sqft within which the area allocated for Retail is around 5000sqft. The entire retail area in the building is proposed to be completely powered by renewable energy through solar PV panels installed on the roof to make it ZERO ENERGY BUILDING.

The Ground, Mezzanine and the First Floors are for retail. The Second and the terrace floor will be a Puma Social Area. The parking is in the Basement.

b. Design initiative
Working on the brief from Puma to design a sustainable building which will be their flagship store in India as well as probably their first sustainable effort in the world in retail the architects Studio Decode imagined to create a High Performance Building. That is everything a building traditionally does this building does it better. Whether it is the amount of natural light, internal climate/ environment, better energy management, materials used and the way they are used etc..

The design iterations that lead to the final built form was focused on energy efficiency, optimal day lighting, hybrid cooling and building life cycle as key parameters that influenced the development of design.

C. DESIGN CHALLENGE
Puma was very clear from the initial discussions that the retail spaces in the building needs to be completely net zero. We proposed that it should be a self sufficient net zero effort and not through offsetting. It led to the conclusion that the net zero will be achieved through a design strategy of various solar PV options. We have a mix of polycrystalline to BIPV panels for the building.

However the challenge was that we did not have enough area to mount the Solar PV panels needed to meet the energy requirement. The building is built on a 90’ x60’ site in a dense commercial area with a relatively small foot print which means that after allocating area for services on the roof we are left with a relatively small area for mounting solar panels. Traditionally a sustainable effort in buildings entails working out the energy requirements for a space, figuring out how many PV panels would be required to support it and then allocate an area to mount them. However in our case due to lack of space we had to work in reverse. We first ascertained how much of space we have to mount PV panels, fix a number for energy requirement that can be supported by the PV Panels and then went to work on the design of the building. Thus the first step was to design a highly efficient building envelope which will cut off most of the external forces that causes high energy usage and support it with many sustainable ideas which will allow us to cut down the energy requirements further.
D. Key Design Parameters for Energy Efficiency

1. SUSPENDED VOLUME
A two storey volume is suspended from the roof in the center of the building volume. As an important design aspect the suspended structure is unique due to the complexities in its engineering and also its purpose.

Salient features of the design of the volume as well as it’s significance:
a) The entire suspended volume works as a plugged in volume to the shell. The entire suspended volume is recyclable besides a thin layer of concrete used for the floor. Hence a large volume of the building has been plugged into the shell as a completely recyclable entity. Thus making it a building with high recycle content. The entire volume can be unplugged and recycled.

b) The voids around the suspended volume allows for easy as well as efficient circulation of air throughout the internal space. There is a consistent fresh air supplied from the earth air tunnel that enters the store pre-cooled, rises up through the voids, and extractors on the top sucks it out, thus creating the draft. This cycle creates a constant draft and maintains the internal environmental comforts without cooling the space through mechanical air conditioning (AC) systems as well as reducing the use of AC during summer.

c) Due to the density of the urban fabric in the area where the building is located peripheral access of light into the building is quite limited. The voids around the suspended volume also acts as light wells which allow light to come in to the various levels of the building from the top.

b) By the making the ground floor (GF) volume larger by taking its roof higher more light enters into the GF. Hence rather than light just entering from only the front, GF gets light from three sides. By having the voids, light from higher up which is less obstructed reaches the GF. Hence the voids around the suspended volume almost act like light wells and allows light to various nooks and corners. Since the GF is the main retail area emphasis was on providing more natural light.

2. FRONT CANOPY
A large cantilevered canopy is provided in the front to cut early morning eastern sunlight and subsequently heat. If we didn’t do this by the time the store opened in the morning the load on the mechanical system to cool the space would be much higher. Also the front canopy have BIPV’s (Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic Panels) which generates electricity while allowing natural light into the plaza from the top as well, rather than cutting it.

3. BUILDING SHELL
If the building shell is not efficient in insulating/ protecting the space within, the mechanical systems/services adopted will not work efficiently and will also increase the load on the Air Conditioning Systems.

a) The walls are made of porotherm blocks which have many benefits.
Indian Green Building Council recommends a U Value of 1.5 watt per sqm. The
Weinerberger blocks used come in at 1 watt per sqm.

b) The blocks are made from desilting the lakes from an area around Bangalore called Kunigal. These lakes are the only source of water for the villages around and government spends extremely large amount of tax payer’s money every year to remove the silt to increase the water table and dumping it as waste elsewhere. Now this waste has a use as well as a source of income. It is also a lightweight material and hence the structure designed tends to be a bit lighter and hence reduction of materials used etc.

c) The concrete panels used for cladding the façade are factory made. Firstly it allows efficiency of material usage that is less wastage of material used to make those panels. Less waste generated on site since the panels are just brought to site to mount. The concrete panels also protect the building envelope and needs practically no maintenance. No paint is required for those sides where the panels have been mounted.

d) The glass in the building has low E and low SHGC specifications which helps in reduction of heat gain from sun and maintains the internal environment comforts.

e) Bamboo panels have been extensively used for cladding the suspended volume and the staircase. Bamboo is a renewable material and thus a sustainable material.

4) WATER CONSERVATION MEASURES
a) Sewage Treatment Plant: All Water will be recycled and treated to tertiary standards and reused for flushing and landscaping requirements

b) Reuse of Treated Water: Treated water is reused for flushing, landscape and make up water for water cooled outdoor unit.

c) Low Flow Plumbing Fixtures: Low water consuming flushes for water closet and urinals and dual flush water closets have been specified.

d) Rain Water Harvesting: Most of the site run off water from ground and terrace is collected, treated and reused.

5) LIGHTING
a) More then 90% of interior spaces have direct views to natural daylight. Thus use of artificial lighting is minimized.
b) Occupancy sensors provides automatic on/off control so that lights are not being used when the room is unoccupied. Since occupancy sensors have been provided in car parking areas and toilets, there will be energy savings and efficiency of lighting use.
c) LED’s have been specified for all retail display track lights.

6) INNOVATIVE COOLING SYSTEMS

The Store uses a combination of Earth Air Tunnel and Under Floor Air Distribution System for cooling the space. The Mechanical Cooling will only be turned on if required during the Peak Summer.

The Earth Air Tunnel (EAT) provides Fresh air which is pre cooled. Soil temperature, at a depth of about 12 feet or more, stays fairly constant throughout the year, and is approximately equal to the average annual ambient air temperature. The ground can therefore, be used as a heat sink for cooling in the summer and as a heat source for heating in the winter. A simple method of using this concept is to pass air through an underground air tunnel. The air thus cooled or heated can be used directly. In this development we are using earth air tunnel system to cool the fresh air in summer and heat the fresh air in winter.

This system can give an outlet temperature of 25.5 C at peak summer i.e when the ambient is 36 C and 24 C when the ambient is 10 to 13 C.
The system proposed for this project is as follows:

The pre-cooled fresh air from Earth Air Tunnel enters the diffusers at the ground level instead of the regular diffusers at the ceiling. This is called Under Floor Air Distribution System. Typically, only the first 8’ ht of a volume requires to be cooled as this is the volume inhabited by the occupants. Cooling the volume of air above 8’ is waste of energy.
The air will then be exhausted through stack effect with extractors in the roof creating a continuous draft.

7) MISCELLANEOUS
a) A BMS (building management system) is used to manage and control
a) Electric car charging ports have been provided to encourage use of Electric Cars.
b) Bicycle parking with facility for shower has also been provided.
d) The building is expecting a LEED platinum rating
e) The display systems have been made with environment friendly materials.

e. CONCLUSION
The ‘Building’ as a ‘SYSTEM’……
Through the process of analytical studies, understanding of known parameters that are a cause for increase in energy consumption, design solutions that can negate these parameters along with other mechanisms have been designed and built in to the building system to achieve the ZERO ENERGY BUILDING.

As a conclusion the building embodies the spirit in which retail buildings should be heading. With globalized economies multi-national companies such as Puma have penetrated many markets around the world with very high visibility. Brands such as them often occupy spaces which are high on energy footprints due to the way their version of high end commerce is articulated. Hence it’s an imperative that the bigger globalized businesses, high on cultures of consumption, adopt a sustainable approach sooner since they have a larger impact in tipping the environment.

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PUMA

Bengaluru, India

Other Projects by Studio Decode

THE SUMMIT

PUMA

Bengaluru, India

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