Climate Responsive Strategy Matrix for Designing Buildings in India N. Thakur*, D. Parashar*, C. Chidambaram* and M. Dharwal**† *School of Architecture and Planning, Sharda University, Greater Noida, India **School of Business Studies, Sharda University, Greater Noida, India †Corresponding author: M. Dharwal; mriduldharwal22@gmail.com ABSTRACT The starting point for a good design of any building project is the analysis of the macroclimate and microclimate of the building site that encompasses an understanding of temperature, radiation, wind, precipitation, topography, vegetation, ground cover, etc., which together describe the site climate. Although urban context somewhat unifes, climate and topography prevalent in India are varied and diverse. Most part of the country is hot, while some regions are dry throughout the year, some are humid and some others are composite. The building design features, therefore, need to vary with the diversity to provide comfortable environments naturally. The context and the requirements for thermal comfort provide the basis for building siting, selection of building form and envelope, fenestration design, choice of materials, and other aspects. The paper proposes and discusses the various climate-responsive design strategies that are best adapted for the different climatic zones of India and presents such design interventions and features as a comparative matrix. Such a comparative presentation is novel, convenient, easy to comprehend, and provides a useful toolkit for building designers. The climate- responsive interventions in building design proposed in this study have the potential to enhance built environments naturally, thereby mitigating the adverse environmental impact. The proposed strategies are also validated through a sample feld survey responded by building professionals from various climatic zones of the country. INTRODUCTION The built environment has evolved continuously over a period of time and ages along with the rapid developments as well as technological advancements. Traditionally, local contextual features dominated Architecture by considering aspects of climate, availability of local materials, and local techniques. In recent times, architecture has evolved leaving its local and vernacular forms and adopted global unifying characters, which depend largely on using active means of making buildings thermally comfortable that has resulted in large consumption of energy by the buildings. With increasing energy consumptions and concerns of severe environmental impacts like climate change, depleting ozone layer, and issues of global warming have been on the rise (Jung et al. 2013). The energy efficiency of buildings is the norm prescribed in most environmental policies at the International as well as the National levels (Perez-Lombard et al. 2008). The building design is the major aspect that provides energy efficiency and enables thermally comfortable living environments. It is imperative that the design processes become appropriate and aid in achieving thermal comfort thereby reducing energy demand. Sustainable development requires reducing energy consumption and minimizing the impact of the environment on built structures (Choi et al. 2016). The overall energy consumption by buildings is 40% which is responsible for high carbon emissions. Efforts in recent years have been to reduce CO 2 emissions through the conservation of energy (Harish & Kumar 2016). The building energy consumption is also a response to the climatic zone. Any two climatic zones cannot be considered and addressed as one (Yilmaz 2007). Designing energy-efficient buildings in different climatic conditions would need the study and analysis of the various climatic zones and their impacts. This also includes the study of the use of materials and components that are suitable to the climate and also crucial for sustainable development. Each climatic zone requires different design techniques which need to be addressed appropriately by understanding climate variables including temperature, radiation, rainfall, wind speed and direction, and humidity, to design sustainable buildings. Designing for the climate is crucial for design sustainability, which if addressed correctly can save massive amounts of heating and cooling energy whilst sustaining occupants’ thermal comfort (Albatayneh et al. 2018). Several methods and software on energy simulations of buildings have been developed but still lack a high interaction ca- pability between the real energy data and theoretical data (Venkataraman & Kannan 2013). There is a need to co-relate 2021 pp. 1021-1031 Vol. 20 p-ISSN: 0972-6268 (Print copies up to 2016) No.3 Nature Environment and Pollution Technology An International Quarterly Scientifc Journal Original Research Paper e-ISSN: 2395-3454 Open Access Journal Nat. Env. & Poll. Tech. Website: www.neptjournal.com Received: 05-09-2020 Revised: 09-11-2020 Accepted: 12-11-2020 Key Words: Climate responsive strategies Thermal comfort Green buildings Climatic zones Original Research Paper https://doi.org/10.46488/NEPT.2021.v20i03.009