Home Away From Home - Boys' Hostel, Gurgaon

The Boys’ Hostel at St. Andrews in Khurrampur, Gurgaon by Zero Energy Design Lab is a space that responds to its climatic context, is environmentally sustainable, and provides ample spaces for interaction for its inhabitants – all the while breaking stereotypes of what we have come to associate with conventional hostel designs.

- Sharmila Chakravorty

ZED Lab design studio is determined to create exceptional, comfortable indoor and outdoor spaces with a positive environmental impact. It was founded by Sachin Rastogi and Payal Seth Rastogi. The team’s diverse educational backgrounds, with ten years of combined international experience at U.K and New Zealand, helped in reinterpreting the Indian vernacular architecture and develop ideas which are more relevant to the present time & techniques. The firm believes in designing remarkable architecture that can simultaneously enhance human experience and minimize resource use. Sustainability is not separate from design, but an indispensable component that enhances the experience of the built environment. As vision facilitators, idea generators, and design integrators; the team’s expertise go beyond basic physical principles; their creativity enables the collaboration necessary to develop deeply integrated comfort and energy concepts. The vision is ever-growing with simulation models, custom software, tailored engineering analysis, and physical experiments used to develop and validate these ideas.