Green Building

Walk into the lobby of Bangalore’s Royal Gardenia, a unit of ITC hotels, and you would know how the practical details are being worked out. A vertical garden on the walls and a pool-sized water fountain greet you. You sense that something is missing. Then, it strikes you that the lobby does not have air-conditioning. It has been built to make maximum use of Bangalore’s cool weather. The design takes the advantage of natural wind flow and allows natural light aplenty to flood in. ITC spends Rs. 1 crore on the Royal Gardenia’s lobby. Not much when you consider that, the cost of air-conditioning along would come to about Rs. 25 lakh per month.