The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has recognised Pathways School Gurgaon for its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), thus conferring it with the honour of being the first school serving all grades K-12 in the world to achieve LEED-EB Platinum certification from USGBC. Among all educational facilities worldwide who have achieved this top distinction, which includes only one high school and a small number of university projects, Pathways School Gurgaon is the highest rated.

At Pathways School Gurgaon we believe that in addition to imparting holistic education, it is our duty to sensitise our students about sustainability – and what better way than to make them experience and immerse themselves in a sustainable lifestyle through their everyday activities at school.

Hence, when designing the school, we particularly emphasised on creating a green campus with zero discharge and a low carbon footprint. We took on the challenge of finding simple and unconventional approaches that take full benefit of natural energies and minimal use of complex technologies. This made the project more cost-effective as well, thus disproving the general industry notion that green buildings are inherently more expensive to construct. The design takes cues from traditional Indian architecture where old forts and palaces remained cool in the summers and warm in the winters even in the absence of modern technologies.

The results have been rather overwhelming:

• Our total energy requirements are 40% lesser than those of conventional buildings.

• Our total HVAC (Air Conditioning) requirements are 60% lesser than those of conventional buildings.

• We saved about 8-10% in construction costs too.

Given below are some of the salient features of our sustainable architectural design: