Buildings are
physical systems.
They continuously interact with sun, air, heat, moisture, materials, people and energy. PÉCLET studies those interactions and translates them into design decisions.
The practice
PÉCLET is a building physics and climate design practice. We work alongside architects and engineers on the parts of a building that decide how it will behave: the envelope, the openings, the orientation, and the sequence in which those decisions are taken.
The name is borrowed from the Péclet number, the ratio between transport by flow and transport by spreading. It is a useful thing to keep in mind, because almost every question in this field turns out to be a question about which of those two is doing the work — and answering it wrongly is how a well-intentioned detail becomes a defect.
We are interested in buildings that are comfortable before they are conditioned, and in being able to say why. That means comparative analysis rather than headline figures, junctions rather than averages, and a willingness to report a result that is inconvenient.
Founder
Vivek Kher
Founder
Building physics, and the conviction that a building’s behaviour is decided long before anyone specifies a system.
Vivek Kher founded PÉCLET to work on the part of a project that decides how a building will actually perform: the envelope, the openings, the orientation, and the order those decisions are taken in.
He is a Certified Passive House Designer, and practised in New York on Passive House projects before establishing the studio. That work is where the practice’s bias comes from — reduce demand through form and fabric first, verify with a consistent calculation, and do not let a system specification paper over a geometry problem.
The interest now is in what that discipline becomes when it is re-derived for Indian climates rather than imported wholesale. The method travels. The targets, and the resources each climate offers, do not.
- Certification
- Certified Passive House Designer (CPHD)
- Practice
- Passive House projects, New York
- Focus
- Building physics · Climate design · Envelope performance
How we work
Physics before preference
We start from what the climate demands and what the assembly can do, not from a strategy chosen in advance. Where the analysis contradicts the intent, we say so early, while it is still cheap to change.
Sequence over specification
Most envelope failures are ordering failures. Reduce the load before resisting it; resolve the geometry before sizing the plant. A measure applied out of order costs money without moving the outcome.
Comparative, not predictive
Modelling an unbuilt building tells you which option is better under identical assumptions. It does not tell you what the meter will read. We report the ranking and the margin, and we are explicit about what the model cannot know.
Detail is where it is decided
A continuous insulation line broken at every slab is not an insulated building. A vapour control layer on the wrong side is a trap. We work at junctions because that is where performance is won or lost.
Climate is local
A build-up that is correct in one Indian climate zone can be a defect in another. Strategies transfer only when the resource they depend on transfers with them.