Sustainability
The cheapest energy is the energy a building never asks for. Most of that is decided during design, not during fit-out.
In short
Kabul's climate is demanding in both directions: cold winters that drive heating demand and air pollution, and hot, dry summers that push cooling loads. A building that ignores this pushes the cost onto whoever lives in it, every year of its life. Our work on climate is mostly unglamorous — orientation, envelope, glazing ratios, insulation and services — because that is where the decisions with the longest consequences sit.
We look at reducing a building's energy demand before specifying equipment to meet it. Orientation, window-to-wall ratio, shading, insulation continuity and airtightness cost little at design stage and cannot be retrofitted cheaply.
Kabul's winter air pollution is worsened by inefficient heating. A better-insulated building needs less heat, which reduces both fuel cost and the emissions its residents contribute to the city.
Grid reliability, material availability and budget all constrain what is achievable on a given project. We would rather specify a modest improvement that survives value engineering than an ambitious one that gets removed.
Common questions
Orientation, massing and glazing ratios cost nothing extra at design stage. Insulation and better glazing do add cost, and they should be justified against running cost over the building's life rather than assumed.
Yes, and arguably more so. Where energy is expensive or unreliable, a building that needs less of it is worth more to the people living in it.
We would rather specify a modest improvement that survives value engineering than an ambitious one that gets removed. Envelope decisions are the ones to protect.
Ask early.
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Tell us what you are considering. We can start with the site, the opportunity and the questions that matter before anything gets overcomplicated.
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