First National Workshop on Green Hill Habitat, IIT Roorkee,

CII’s Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) in a collaboration with IIT Roorkee conducted a First National Workshop on Green Hill Habitat on 23rd August 2019 for the knowledge dissemination and capacity building of stakeholders in Hill Ecosystem. Jay Thakkar was one of the speakers along with 12 other eminent speakers from the country. He is also a part of the Technical Committee of Green Hill Habitat. The workshop was succession to development of India's First- of-its-kind rating programme for the greening of hill stations developed by the Technical committee along with research by IGBC. This first draft was launched at IGBC Green Hill Habitat at Green Building Congress 2018 in the presence of Mr Ajay Mishra, Special Chief Secretary (Energy & Environment), Govt. of Telangana and Ms Lisa Bate, Chair, World Green Building Council. The workshop at IIT Roorkee proposed to come out with a document that would help in creating green policies towards hill-centric development, ultimately resulting in enhanced quality of life for citizens in hill stations and development of model Green Hill Cities in India. Jay Thakkar's area of discussion was on the Indigenous sustainable construction practices - Kath-Khuni Architecture of Himachal Pradesh. His presentation gave a deep insight into the various aspects of the kath-khuni architecture from typology to salient features to seismic resilience to the makers and craftspeople of Himachal Pradesh.