Buildings that absorb CO2 like trees

Buildings that absorb CO2 like trees

Built to last and built fast

Becoming reality soon.

Six years ago Wellness Lifestyle came up with the āyushća epithets – a wish list for features and materials required to reinvent habitats for a climate change resilient ecosystem. A few months later Covid stuck and the focus shifted to survival, bio bubbles, longevity and wellness.

Trafficking (not travel) was the largest industry in the world before Covid. Now it is wellness.

Everyone and his grandfather is chasing wellness. From Kerala tourism to the Taj Hotels (who acquired a failed health resort for a Rs 500 crore valuation). Not to be outdone, the IIT Alumni Council got some of the best habitat experts to re invent habitats and communes. Maverick architect Anil Sharma, an IIT Roorkee alumnus who has designed over 150 five star hotels including the Khyber in Gulmarg looked at reinventing convention centres. The team that built Vana in Dehradun helped look at wellness paradigms using complementary medicine. Padma Sri Prof Sharada Srinivasan of NIAS at IISc brought in principles from ancient wisdom. Wellness Lifestyle brought the international best sellor book Ayurveda Revisited by Dr Shantaram Kane to reality. Barefoot golf courses with zero water consumption and biogas became a reality.

But one key objective eluded us till today. How do you make a building behave like a tree. Could it absorb CO2 from the air. Could it strengthen and grow with time. Can it be made with minimal labour and minimum use of scarce resources.

In the mean time, India built the central vista in New Delhi. Built quickly but not built to last. New buildings have cracks. You built fast or build to last. It’s either or. Not AND.

FINALLY TODAY THAT VISION CAME TO LIFE. After sixty months of fact finding, soul searching and hypothesising – the Ayushca blueprint is finally ready to go for testing. Three IIT Alumni startups have finally cracked it. Wellness Lifestyle , Magicrete Building Solutions and CarbonStrong have got the essential technology blocks ready. Jalasya, aerated concrete and fly ash which sets without cement.

A building almost entirely made from waste. It uses no paint and almost no cement or steel. Instead it uses carbon nanotube, activated fly ash, lime powered aerated concrete (like pumice stone) and lime plaster. The building breathes. With time it absorbs CO2 and put on weight. Just like a tree. It gets stronger with time. It uses ancient wisdom with cutting edge technology. AI derived novel materials.

The end result is magical.

The future of sustainable habitats

Will soon be here

Thank you Siddharth Bansal of Magicrete Building Solutions for taking the effort across the finish line today.

Now to walk the talk.

Incidentally Siddharth build a Rs 500 crore topline startup based on fly ash products – creating a billion dollar industry in these six years. Two crore cubic metres replacing bricks with waste.