Lafarge Invention Awards

On March 20th, 2012, the jury members of the Lafarge Invention Awards, chaired by Gérard Kuperfarb, the Group’s Executive Vice President, named the 3 winners of the 2011 edition. The ceremony was held in Bombay in the presence of Bruno Lafont, the Group’s Chairman & CEO.

All the selected projects, which each fit in perfectly with their local environment, respond to sustainable construction challenges in India through innovation, while using local resources intelligently and economically.

This is a solution developed by Ashok B. Lall Architects to ensure thermal comfort in buildings in hot dry climates, using a low-cost, low energy construction system. It is a building method which integrates thermal passive cooling properties into structural elements within the building.

The system uses cool night air or air that has been passed through an evaporative cooler. The air is used to ventilate cavities in precast hollow concrete slabs or blocks made with Ground Granulated Blast furnace Slag (GGBS), so that a coolth store is formed in the building. These cool walls and slabs surround the living areas.

The system also optimizes construction and structural performance, reducing material and water use, and time in construction as well as using the load bearing capacity of the precast slabs or blocks to reduce the steel necessary for horizontal spans.

This is a precast concrete solution for affordable housing, developed by K.T. Group. The precast slabs offer a more durable and less expensive alternative to existing solutions, such as earth or wood walls, bricks or concrete blocks or cast-in-place concrete.

Lightweight and easy to install, they allow rapid construction, design flexibility and a high-quality finish. Since the panels are of a lower thickness than traditional solutions, they also allow a reduction in the use of raw materials.

This is a structural system developed by Manasaram Architects using locally available material Bamboo for the Construction industry.

Bamboo typically has low compressive strength, but can be used to support the roof thanks to a diagonal network of bamboo columns, beams and the reinforcement in the concrete slab.

The concrete roof is then lightened, by the use of rough bamboo splits for reinforcement and Bamboo fibers mixed in the concrete, which increases the bonding between the concrete and reinforcement and also prevents shrinkage cracking.
 
This system provides a more sustainable, lower cost alternative to existing solutions: it replaces steel reinforcements by bamboo (Bamboo is stronger than steel !), taking advantage of a renewable resource widely available in India and allowing up to a 40% reduction in construction costs.

The 3 winners will also be invited to visit the Lafarge Research Center, the leading research center in the world for building materials.

The Jury of the Lafarge Invention Awards, chaired by Gérard Kuperfarb, the Group's Executive Vice President, is comprised of other Lafarge Vice Presidents, as well as well-known experts from the Indian construction sector.

• Gérard Kuperfarb, Executive Vice-President, Lafarge.
• Thomas Farrell, Executive Vice-President, Lafarge.
• Jean-Marc Golberg, Research & Development Director, Aggregates and Concrete, Lafarge
• Dr. Prodipto Ghosh, Distinguished Fellow at TERI, former Secretary, Environment and Forest, Government of India.
• Dr. Ravindra Gettu, Professor of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
• Mrs. Chitra . K . Vishwanath, Managing Director, Biome Environmental Solutions Pvt Ltd.
• Prof. M.S. Shetty, Consultant and Author of "Concrete Technology".
• Surendra Hiranandani, Managing Director and Founder of the Hiranandani Group.

The "Lafarge Invention Awards" were created in 2010 to reward projects by entrepreneurs and researchers in relation to building materials and contributing to sustainable construction.
Entries must be based on an invention less than 5 years old and relate to a new product, industrial process, construction method or service.

The 1st year of the competition attracted the interest of researchers and entrepreneurs from 18 European countries. In 2011, the focus turned to India where the peninsula's rapid economic and demographic growth is generating immense demand for infrastructure and housing.