No Two Projects Would Have the Same Solution Nitin Bhatia is the Managing Director & Principal Consultant of FACET Façade Consultancy, a specialist façade consultancy practice executing projects across India, Middle East and Africa. Nitin has trained as an architect and has worked across disciplines including design, management, R&D and forensics and is currently working on several projects in India and overseas including super tall buildings such as the 117 floor World One Tower in Mumbai with an added experience in engineering, manufacture, installation, project management, procurement and testing of façades. Nitin Bhatia spoke eloquently on evaluation and selection of glazing systems for optimal performance of façades and fenestration.
Nitin Bhatia, CMD & Principal Consultant, FACET Façade Consultancy
WFM: Kindly brief on how the façade and fenestration designs could help building “net energy gainers” or “zeroenergy” buildings? Nitin Bhatia (NB): Today’s façade is a result of the aspirations of the end consumer, buoyed by developers and designers. That said, due to sheer economics, such consumers are a tiny minority, hence projects propagating the growth and evolution of façades remain relatively few and far between. It is not that the technology of advanced/energy efficient façades does not exist today, but it is other considerations that do not promulgate its widespread utilisation. An energy efficient façade is a costly proposition and is therefore dependent upon
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the developer’s appetite to procure it. The costs involved include all or a combination of thermal isolation of the framing system, high performing glazing, shading systems, double skin, light shelves, photovoltaics, and finally orientation and geometry. If all these are considered and incorporated in the façade design the façade could contribute towards an energy efficient building and may perhaps be a net energy positive building when other factors are included. With every passing year, costs for materials and technologies enabling “energy efficient facades” are reducing as a result of technological advancements, hardware and software development and ease of availability, as well as economies of scale, thereby making energy efficient façade components economically feasible to use. WFM: What are the design factors which could optimise daylighting? NB: There are many design factors that must be used to achieve the means to the end; most important of them would be the “logic” that
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