Stack ventilation and cooling for urban sites - research project funded under the UK "Partners in Technology Programme".

The paper outlines the value of roof intake air ducts to serve largely passively ventilatedand cooled buildings in urban areas. This approach improves air quality, reduces noisepollution and enhances security.A diagrammatic representation of night cooling using this approach is given followedby a description of experimental work at the Bartlett. This work is directed at establishingmethods of starting the ventilation process by overcoming buoyancy, and enhancing thecooling process by providing "mixed mode" cooling.The author reports on "full size" experiments to establish wind driven ventilationtechniques and experiments to establish whether roof planting could provide locally cooled air.Further experimental work on the latter is suggested.The paper concludes by describing future work aimed at introducing refrigeration as a"mixed mode" ventilation and cooling strategy where passive night ventilation replaces the bulkof the cooling load, and discusses the architectural implications of the research. Furtherresearch to establish client attitudes to area loss in buildings as a result of installing largevertical passive stacks is recommended.