It’s about two campuses in Gurgaon: one is TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute), and the other is called Cybercity. They are close to each other, but from a design perspective, they might as well exist on different planets. The Energy Research Institute campus does not use air-conditioning. Instead, it has been designed with air tunnels to cool by removing hot air and replacing it with fresh air. This keeps the ambient temperature inside the rooms in the campus at a comfortable level.

Then there is Cybercity, where multinational companies flaunt their brand names on top of glass facade buildings, alongside jutting exhaust pipes from diesel generators on top of the buildings. Every building is encased in glass, which makes this commercial hub a heat island. It’s almost impossible to walk around this campus, as there are no trees, and during the summer, the heat bounces off the pavements around the buildings. While trees surround TERI by design, a new lab was actually designed around the trees rather than cutting any of them.

As the glass buildings trap heat inside, the air conditioning further throws hot air into the street. Walking next to these buildings during any season is impossible, as the radiated and reflected heat and light are unbearable. The glass manufacturers have not given up. They are selling higher-glazed glass to even the new buildings that were built last year. It seems as if the builders do not want to learn anything from the TERI campus next door.

Now, the many companies that inhabit the buildings in Cybercity all have ESG targets, including reducing their carbon footprint. But they continue to occupy these buildings, which take ten times more energy generated by diesel generators to keep them cool in summer, and even in winter, they need air conditioning to keep the air circulating. Design disasters and energy disasters: These buildings beat all principles of design into submission by creating deep cave-like structures that have neither air circulation nor heat dissipation. These design disasters are seen as modern or ‘cool’ when unsuitable and outdated, even in the Western countries where they are copied from.

Buildings cloaked in glass façades become urban gas chambers—structures designed to trap and magnify heat, silently suffocating their occupants with rising internal temperatures and bad air. As the mercury rises, these glass-covered buildings absorb and lock heat inside, turning interiors into pressure cookers that demand enormous amounts of energy to cool. In the process, air conditioners act as exhaust vents, ejecting heat back onto streets and........

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