Air-conditioning avoidance: lessons from the windcatchers of Iran

The use of centralized air-conditioning systems in buildings with fixed windows is becoming an increasingly high-risk strategy in buildings for a number of reasons. These include fuel insecurity and price rises, the need to reduce climate change emissions from the built environment, and the need to make buildings more robust in the face of the extreme weather events that are beginning to characterize climates in a warming world. The need to be able to naturally ventilate buildings to reduce energy use in them and to make them occupiable in brown and black-outs is accepted, but in hot regions of the world is this a realistic design aim as cities become more and more dependent on high energy airconditioning solutions? This paper outlines how lessons can be learnt from the traditional windcatchers of the Middle East