E-Newsletter from ZED EARTH - July 2014
EARTH WATCH When we do things differently... Greetings to all ZED Earth-ers again. It s time for another monthly update. This is due about end-July, but we chose to put this edition to bed since a week won't make much di erence. I took a walk around Phase 1 of the campus of 44 villas just the other day. I was happy to notice that things are looking much cleaner and quieter. There are issues, small ones but annoying, that the few residents in the campus have. We have been doing every bit to resolve them. Our o cers have been on standby for every such need. Ajith, Sashi, Krishna and others have been doing their best to address these issues as and when they pop up. Some of these have to do with the behaviour of wood and we had alerted you on this in our earlier chats with you. One of the residents has a challenge with the roof garden and some perceived challenges. We are addressing that, too.
Ko Annan wrote many years ago, We are not urging people to do di erent business, but to do business di erently. He was talking in the context of climate warming and little steps that all of us have to take to make just that bit of di erence to the way we contribute to carbon excess with our lifestyles. When we do business di erently, there are the obvious challenges that come which seemingly, on the surface of it, are di cult to perceive because they are not the conventional package of solutions. The roof garden is one such example. These will settle down as we go along. May we reassure you once again that it is nothing to do with the quality of the work as much as the behaviour of plants and soil, and it's a matter of time before they root well enough and not cause you challenges. This is not to say that a few snags and workmanship challenges should not be addressed. We will.
Work on other fronts On other fronts, there are 14 of these villas that were to be completed by July end, as per the schedule that we had committed. They are on target, though if you took a walk around those homes, you would not think that the work is done. The two weeks that we have before us will see about seven of those homes completed with a spillover of another 10 days for the balance seven to be completed. That will leave only eight more homes, as we had said earlier, at Phase 1. These are targeted for completion in the coming month.
The xing of doors and windows and the main doors has continued to dog our schedules, thanks to vendor challenges (the doors are being done by one of the nest design studios for such furniture in the city and in South India. These are the same professionals who do work for a few other premier enclaves in Bangalore in the luxury villa category). We are taking care to ensure that wood behaviour would be at its very minimal in these homes and into the rest of the homes coming up..
Live in them, relate to them We urge as many of you to occupy these homes for these are made of living elements. Only they live far longer (some of the elements over millions of years) and therefore they seem dead to us as humans. Home, heat and hearth make the di erence to these living elements inside a home whether it is furniture or walls and paints and blocks.., they all contract and expand and settle down over the rst two years of occupying them.
We have initiated a simulation model of one of the villas in order to understand how the design elements and architectural aspects of microclimate that we have installed at ZED Earth are beginning to work. Here is a sample graphic version of the simulation model with notes that might help you understand how these homes make a world of di erence compared to the regular buildings anywhere in the city or elsewhere in the world.
Upper attic reďŹ nement It is time for us to be looking at some of the ner, upper attic elements of re nement on the ZED values at each of these homes at ZED Earth. We will begin to address them in the next few months as we go along, while we also take care of the gross elements of construction that is inevitable to the process of creation of a campus as large. We are happy to state that we included three more members in the last month. All of them ne leaders in their own professional segments and who have bought into the campus's values and seek to stay here and not buy it merely as an investment.
The more prosaic parts As for the more prosaic elements of progress on the campus development at ZED Earth, here is a quick listing. In Phase 2 you would have seen to the north a tower, which is the overhead tank for Phase 2. This will be completed by early August. Phase 1 has a hydro pneumatic system with an underground tank and a fresh water treatment system. The set of energy e cient pumps ensure distribution of water e ectively in these homes in Phase 1. This is already in place. In Phase 2, it was mandatory by the government's regulation for us to have an overhead tank since the numbers of homes are more here. The overhead tank has been nished to look pleasant. It will carry a certain textured tone for its external facade. We hope that it will add aesthetic value, and make for a nice feature in Phase 2 part of the campus. If one of you can suggest an idea for a large mural. The area around the overhead tank will be landscaped, work is afoot. We should be completing that in the next month. Work on the club and the amenities (I am not listing them here since it has already been listed in the previous editions) is going on pretty smartly. We have a very senior architect, Anil Bhaskaran, working on re ning the elements at the club. His visions match uncannily those of ours. He is known over the last 30 years to have created a portfolio of some ne green buildings with an eye for aesthetic detail that will begin to re ect on Club ZED Earth by the time we complete the work.
Our schedule is still set for August 15, though there have been, as usual, glitches on time which are only inevitable on any project scale. Coordination is a major challenge always. We are doing our best to get these things moving in a way that the work is done right, and on time. The work on the swimming pool is on schedule. The community gathering area is also being taken up. The soft elements of the water body and the deck around it, as well as the gym are also being addressed. The stores and the labour quarters have been moved out, as we had promised in the previous edition. These areas will be claimed by the shrub species that we will plant to nudge the land gently back to life. The campus hygiene and cleanliness is way higher today with clear instructions to all executing sta and workers to keep each villa under construction clean and debris-free. The housekeeping teams both external and internal for homes have been working in tandem with the engineers to ensure that such cleanliness in the campus is of high order. The Phase 2 entry area will soon sport a row of stately trees. There is a green curtain around the sewage treatment plant area to ensure that there is no noise, as well as that it is discreet. We had brought you an extensive note on the sewage treatment plant in our previous edition. There is a green barrier standing as high as ve meters on the L Block area to cordon o visually from the areas outside the campus, that is planned to be created. This should be completed by end August.
Those compact villas Work on the compact villas to the far end on the western front hemming the areca farm is on. Those homes have gotten started and should be working on a tight schedule in the months ahead. It might be useful to remind you that we are set to complete a total of 64 villas before December this year. That schedule is on.
We don't see any challenge on this work. We have cleaned up in the last three months a lot of the design and execution frameworks and have charted the course in a way that our professional engineering team can go ahead with the execution without compromise on all the elements of sustainability and of embodied energy that are central and quintessential to any ZED enclave.
You must visit... We urge you to visit the campus in order to see the di erence that the team has brought about in the last two months. Many of the residents, I know, have not visited for some months. We will appreciate your inputs and we will want to learn in a way that we can bring more value to the campus. Season s best.
Harikrishna President ZED Communities
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