Design criteria for warm humid climates: a case study.

Natural cross ventilation to take advantage of air velocity in getting comfort, and solar protection, are the main design criteria traditionally proposed for warm humid climate. Usually, priority is given to natural ventilation related to design decisions such as orientation and windows (size, location and type). However, the wind is the most variable climatic factor, also affected by the urban context, the architectural shape and even, opening and closing windows and doors. On the other hand, to achieve comfort in some warm humid climatic conditions, according to traditional criteria, high indoor air velocities are needed. But these high air velocities (above l .5m per second) are very difficult to achieve indoors and, if it were possible, it should be annoying. These and other usual climatic design recommendations for warm humid regions, which don't fit appropriately to traditional compact urban zones are discussed on the paper, by a case study of a housing building project located in the historic centre- of Matanzas city in Cuba.