News India Times
February 12, 2016
12
Community
– that’s all you need to know
By Suman GuhaMozumder
hen the winter
storm Jonas
clobbered New
York and New
Jersey late last
month, covering streets and
homes with 30 inches of snow
over 36 hours, almost everybody
prayed for a break from nature’s
fury.
Not the Parikhs of Henry
Street, Paramus.
There in their home of 26
years, the Parikh family, headed
by Raj Parikh, an engineer of
repute, sat and watched snow
piling up around their home,
but not an iota on their drive-
way, or on the roof of the home.
The reason?
Parikh, who served the New
York City Department of
Housing Preservation and
Development for over 20 years,
ending his tenure as assistant
commissioner and his son Asit,
a Manhattan building contractor
for green-buildings, had
installed what the junior Parikh
described as a geo-thermal-
solar-thermal system about two
years ago that simultaneously
cools and heats air and water in
the home using a network of
pipes.
The home captures rainwater
year round and then uses the
solar-thermal system to heat the
water to 105 degrees, which is
stored in multiple insulated
tanks. The water then supple-
ments two ground-source heat
pumps developed by Raj to con-
stantly supply 100-degree water
to the driveway and walkways,
which is distributed via a net-
work of heating pipes under-
neath the concrete.
“You know what – we were
actually waiting for good snow-
fall although hardly anybody
wanted this. We were waiting for
the blizzard to test the success of
what we have done. Here we are
the shorts on the block, the
Indians. Everyone was skeptical
(when we were doing this). All
thought that ‘we must be fools
to waste money…Oh these
crazy Indians or something like
that,” Asit Parikh, who describes
himself as a ‘passive house’
designer, meaning designer of
buildings using way less energy
than conventional ones, said.
“So this blizzard actually
came handy as we needed a
proof and a validation of what a
geo-thermal-solar-thermal sys-
tem is,” he said.
The senior Parikh is a
research engineer at Cooper
Union School of Engineering
and Center for Innovation and
Energy Reclamation, where he
studied in 1960s after coming to
the U.S. fromMumbai, and has
now his own consultancy. He
could not be reached for com-
ments.
So, how and when did this
idea to install their home with a
geo-thermal-solar-thermal sys-
tem come about?
Asit Parikh said the idea ger-
minated when her mother
Bharti Parikh, some five years
ago, wanted a bigger house with
all the amenities like heating
and cooling but without modern
gadgets. “My mom is the boss in
our house, and so we, my father
and myself, and also my
younger brother who is an archi-
tect, started putting our heads
together and utilized our skills in
the construction of a green
building which is our home and
in the process bettered our skills
as well,” he said. “My mom
wanted to make sure we are 100
percent compliant with Vastu
Shastra and we honored her
wish even while making it green.
It’s possible,” he said.
Asit Parikh said his company
has made many green buildings
around the United States,
including in Harvard and MIT
and had won a competition in
2006 after Hurricane Katrina in
2006 in New Orleans where
there was a sustainable design
competition called global Green
USA. “Both my father, and
myself, to some extent, have
long experience and expertise in
these things,” he said.
The system, which maintains
the home’s temperature on the
coldest and hottest of days, is
developed to not let anything go
to waste. Even the melted snow
collected from the driveway and
walkway gets recycled back into
the home and used later on for
washing clothes and watering
plants.
“The key with Zenesis House
is that we did not want to buy a
boiler, an air conditioning sys-
tem, not buy a hot water heater
or even electricity. Our motto, as
my father said, is to do every-
thing with the help of earth and
sun,” Asit Parikh said.
“As I said, we have been wait-
ing to test and get validation of
what we did. Everybody is happy
at home now,” he said.
He likened their scientific
experiment to the experience in
a temple in south India for
instance, where the temperature
outside may be 110 degrees
Fahrenheit, but the marble floor
feels cool the soles of the feet.
“That happens because we
are using the temperature of the
earth and the building founda-
tion to cool that building, pas-
sively," Asit Parikh said. "So, by
our tapping into ancient wis-
dom of some of the world's
long-standing ancient civiliza-
tions, we are able to use the sun
and the earth strategically to
manage indoor space and the
outdoor space temperature. It’s
all science.”
Asit Parikh, who studied eco-
nomics and psychology from the
City University of NewYork, and
worked for some time with
Goldman Sachs, said while they
would patent the technology,
although it has been used before
but separately.
He said he does not want to
spend his lifetime trying to
patent it. “Snow-melting system
is not new, solar heater system is
not new, but nobody has com-
bined solar-thermal with geo-
thermal. So that is something
new, but my goal is not patent
but to make carbon-free build-
ings, more energy efficient. If we
do not get rid of carbon by at
least 80 percent, our planet is
screwed.”
W
How The Parikhs Of Paramus Beat The Blizzard
By a StaffWriter
S
oumitra Dutta, a manage-
ment expert who served
as visiting professor in the
Haas School of Business at
Berkeley, has been appointed
the dean and professor of
management of the new
Cornell College of Business.
Cornell University
announced Jan 30 that its new
College of Business to be
launched during the 2016-17
academic year, will comprise
Cornell’s three accredited busi-
ness programs – the School of
Hotel Administration, the
Charles H. Dyson School of
Applied Economics and
Management, and the Samuel
Curtis Johnson Graduate
School of Management.
Each school will maintain
its unique identity and mis-
sion, while their collective
capabilities will be strength-
ened by bringing together fac-
ulty, curricular offerings, and
programs within a cohesive
College, a press release from
the university said.
Dutta, who is an authority
on the impact of new technol-
ogy on the business world,
especially social
media and social net-
working, and on
strategies for driving
growth and innova-
tion by embracing the
digital economy, most
recently served as the
Roland Berger
Chaired Professor of
Business and
Technology at
INSTEAD, a top
ranked business
school in
Fontainebleau France,
and was the founder
and academic director
of the eLab at
INSEAD.
During his 23-year
tenure at INSEAD,
Dutta served as dean
of external relations; dean of
executive education; and dean
of technology and e-learning.
He has served as a visiting pro-
fessor in the Haas School at
Berkeley, Oxford Internet
Institute at University of
Oxford, and Judge School at
University of Cambridge in
England. He has lived and
worked in the U.S., Europe,
and Asia, including stints as an
engineer with GE in the U.S.
and Schlumberger in Japan.
He is the co-editor and
author respectively of two
influential reports in technolo-
gy and innovation -- the Global
Information Technology
Report, co-published with the
World Economic Forum, and
the Global Innovation Index, to
be co-published with the
World Intellectual Property
Organization.
Dutta received a B.Tech. in
electrical engineering and
computer science from the
Indian Institute of Technology,
New Delhi, and has an MS in
business administration, an
MS in computer science, and a
PhD in computer science from
the University of California at
Berkeley.
Soumitra Dutta Named Dean Of Cornell
University’s New College Of Business
