Climate Action India Project #38519

Construction to Combat Climate Change

by Auroville Language Laboratory

Project Report | Feb 18, 2020
News about our beloved building

By Mita Radhakrishnan | With Tapas, Project Leaders and Eternal Idealists

Hi all!

Our first report to you was on Nov 5th, and the second on Nov 19th.

Between then and now, we've done exactly what we mentioned we wanted to do in our Nov 5th report : the flooring of my room, the room next to it (basically the South-West block First Floor) and (drumroll!), the upstairs toilets!!!

The toilets upstairs: People at Tomatis don't have to go downstairs to pee anymore! Very recently finished, just today we got two comments from users about how beautiful they are. They are very simple and zen, yet very elegant. The women's toilet (like the men's downstairs) is full of light. The men's toilet has lovely colours.

The lime paint done by Selvam and Kadhir (based on the traditional kaddukai nut fermented and then mixed with the lime) turned out to be an absolutely beautiful colour. We are so happy to have found this alternative to paint... anyway, you shouldn't paint lime at all, because that cuts off its possibility to breathe. Well, with lime paint, the lime keeps breathing! They've also painted the worker's room outside with the lime paint and it looks absolutely gorgeous. We don't need to use that eco-paint anymore, we've found the solution for the lime paint, thanks always to Tapas and her ingenuity. This means, we can keep maintaining our building with lime!!!! The ecological alternative to paint!

My room and the room next to it : Finished in time for my birthday on the 01.01.20. What an incredible present! Tapas did this as a Yantra > a sacred Indian geometric design. We got pinkish granite slabs (the cheapest we could find and also the largest), along with blue oxide for the spaces in between, and orange for the "egg"/oval shaped centre, bounded by a copper strip. It is absolutely beautiful as well as powerful. It is incredible how the floor transformed the entire room! Several Tomatis adult clients have mentioned how well they feel inside. I do all the consultations there now, and also find that working has suddenly become so concentrated. The Yantra clearly has a deep effect. The granite is also cool.

This is a bit lame, but, I don't have pictures since my iphone storage is totally full. But we will post some pics soon.

We couldn't yet work on the shaft as wished though Tapas has been planning that with the carpenter, Iyyanar. We're going to do price shopping for the glass. They are planning to search for teakwood (much stronger) for the frames of the internal shafts.

Meanwhile, did you know about Transsolar? This world-famous climate engineering company based in Stuttgart Germany, with offices in the USA, Paris, etc, took on our building project pro-bono to study our climate-based solutions in their "Transsolar Academy".

We are featured on their website : https://transsolar.com/projects/auroville-language-lab-all!

Thanks to their help and guidance, and also help from CSR (Auroville Centre for Scientific Research), we set up temperature and humidity-measuring sensors in various parts of the building and every two weeks data is downloaded and sent to Transsolar by Raj and Mano. This study will go on till May.

We are also listed in their projects here : https://transsolar.com/projects/filter:in-progress

We just found out that The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, which was a gift from Portia de Rossi to her wife, Ellen DeGeneres, has a building based on sustainable architecture. https://theellenfund.org/the-campus

Guess who they partnered with for the climate engineering aspects? Transsolar!!!

We were featured in Transsolar's June 2019 Newsletter (https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?u=07a9649c04f2d4b3b5a2e3475&id=8e5e3b8030) and they were featured in Transsolar's October 2019 newsletter! (https://us16.campaign-archive.com/?u=07a9649c04f2d4b3b5a2e3475&id=8a2ba3ea25)

Maybe, just maybe, we can reach out to Ellen and Portia through Transsolar???? An idea to be followed up in the future.

Meanwhile, the Lab and Tomatis are both full and humming. Our shoe stand is too small now; we need another one. It is quite amazing how so many people can be inside the building in its different spaces, and it seems to hold everyone without any noise or problem. There's been wonderful work and lots of progress for the kids at Tomatis, and the adults too - transformative work. And a lot of activities and classes at the Lab. Progress on projects too. Huge thanks to Miko, one of our wonderful volunteers, a retired schoolteacher and language-lover from the USA who has come with all his enormous goodwill and knowledge; the students love him and he just "gets it"- all of it! It is such a pleasure. And the rest of the team too, is wonderful - we have wonderful volunteers and teachers as well as the staff > we all enjoy working together and working in this building is a delight!

The building seems to get more beautiful as time passes and we finish bits and pieces of it as and when we can. Everyone seems to love being in it. The most recent comment in our visitors book is : "This building is so beautiful. Thank you so much!"

One is starting to think : this isn't just "construction to combat climate change" (which it is, of course), it is "construction to nurture the human spirit".

Links:

Transsolar Academy Studies Auroville Language Lab building

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Nov 19, 2019
This is happening tomorrow!

By Mita Radhakrishnan | Project Leader and Eternal Idealist

Tomorrow, the Chief Resilience Officer of Chennai is visiting the Language Lab building along with a team from the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, USA (google that!).

The AARFRC recently formed the Cooler Cities Action Initiative, a program seeking to focus and accelerate proactive decision making, cooling interventions and investment at the community level to address the sometimes-lethal – and increasingly severe – problem of extreme heat in cities, particularly for those most vulnerable. The initiative is comprised of a set of partners including city Chief Resilience Officers, humanitarian NGOs, insurance industry representatives, and other practitioners in the climate risk, finance and resilience space. This visit is to firm up on their overall strategy for India and to explore activating a pipeline of projects and activities to raise awareness and spur behavior change among at-risk communities; implementing “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects (e.g., cooler roofs, green/garden roofs, cool pavements, and urban forests and green spaces); and deploying a progressive risk pool (or "captive"), risk transfer & investment approach to financing life-saving evidence-based cooling interventions.

The AARFRC team includes : The Director of the AARFRC at the Atlantic Council, the Director, Humanitarian Initiative, the Associate Director, as well as an author and contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine.

The 100 RC team includes : The India Strategy Head, a Lead Researcher, Okapi/IIT(M) as well as the CRO, Chennai.

In the morning, they will be visiting the Auroville Building Centre and then going around Auroville to visit a few Auroville projects, including the Solar Bowl. They will come to the Language Lab after lunch.

Our program looks like this :

2:30-3:30 : Presentation and tour of the Building, esp system of cooling without air-conditioning, lime, cool-roof lime coating, vaastu, Electromagnetic Compliance, wastewater recycling system, etc (me)

3:30-4:00 : One of our consultants will present on lime as a building material and will share the details of her study of the use of lime in our building and another: "Use of Lime Mortar and Post-Occupancy Thermal Performance Analysis of Buildings". She'll also share the findings from her other study on Climate-Responsive architecture. And speak about a cost-effective experiment on rooftop gardening.

4:00-4:30 : Presentation on the Use of Probiotics in our building and numerous advantages of Probiotics. Unfortunately, our two consultants can’t make it tomorrow but we have permission to show their presentation on Probiotics in building construction and we have a film as well about the use of probiotics in our building.

Will use the occasion also to launch our Fundraising Appeal for Giving Tuesday (Dec 03rd) to help us complete the building. You'll be hearing about this very soon! We believe a ton of people, giving small amounts - just because you - our friends - ask them, will help us reach the goal!

So, think of us tomorrow and wish us luck! We'll share pics!

Much love,

Mita

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Nov 5, 2019
Building Update

By Tapas and Mita | Project Leaders

Briefly, folks :

We didn't receive your donation yet! Ever since the project went Live, GG (GlobalGiving) had major problems in its disbursements to India. These have actually been stopped until they sort out the problem.

Don't worry! We've worked out a "fiscal sponsorship" agreement with AVI-USA, so that GG will transfer your (and any future) donations to AVI-USA, which will forward it to the Auroville Unity Fund for us.

We're hoping to get your first monies for the Building real soon!

Stuff on the anvil and ready to start : the flooring in my office and the room next to it, and the upstairs toilets.

And we're also planning to make the first shaft.

We'll keep you updated.

Meanwhile, please spread the word to your friends, family, colleagues about the project! Now that the funds bottleneck has been solved, let the taps flow!

Let's complete this marvelous building asap!

Love,

Tapas and Mita

for the Team of Auroville Language Lab.

PS : On November 20th, the Chief Resilience Officer of Chennai will bring a whole team from the Cooler Cities Action Initiative of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre, and the 100 Resilient Cities network to visit our building!

We'll take them on a tour of the building and present all of its special features : the system of cooling without air-conditioning, lime, the cool-roof lime coating, vaastu, electromagnetic compliance, waste water recycling system, solar system, second-hand wood, etc. An Aurovilian architect friend whose research paper about our building was published in an Elsevier Journal on Building, will present on that paper and the advantages of lime. And our two dear friends from the Auroville Probiotics House will present on the use of probiotics in our building, and the numerous advantages of probiotics in building construction.

One of the visiting team is a contributing editor to Rolling Stones magazine, so let's see if that visit gets us some coverage and helps get the message out!

PPS : We've also been doing a lot of tree planting around the building! And our vortex which cleans the waste water for reuse is working perfectly now.

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