Climate Change and Public Awareness

Climate change is already harming people and ecosystems. Its reality can be seen in melting glaciers, disintegrating polar ice, thawing permafrost, changing monsoon patterns, rising sea levels, changing ecosystems and fatal heat waves. Climate change poses a risk to the human rights of millions of people--such as their rights to life, health, food and water. The risks are highest in developing countries, where extreme weather events, crop failures and other emergencies related to climate change are projected to occur with greater frequency. Scientists are not the only ones talking about these changes. From the apple growers in Himachal to the farmers in Vidharbha and those living in disappearing islands in the Sunderbans are already struggling with the impacts of climate change. This is just the beginning. We need to act to avoid terrible climate change. No one knows how much warming is "safe". There are now different tools and techniques available to guide the designers and users to have a multifaceted approach in building design involving- climate responsive architecture, materials with low embodied energy, reduction of ecological footprint, efficient structural design, recycling and harnessing renewable energy to meet the energy needs of the building etc. In this paper, form finding is employed as an approach for designing environmental friendly “green rated” buildings integrating energy-related design aspects as one of its main boundary condition. This method is employed in the context of various climatic zones in the country. In order to bring about parity and for standardizing, the same building typology is used throughout the zones. This paper deals with the relation between building form and envelope and its energy consumption in hot dry climatic zone of the country.