...
The tradition of cooling without air conditioning,
which incorporates a range of design responses to
climate apart from evaporative cooling, has its
origins in ancient Egypt; it subsequently spread
eastwards through the Middle East and Iran to north
India with the Moghul empire, and westwards across
north Africa to southern Spain.
...
cooling systems in Iran (incorporating
wind-catchers, porous water pots and salsabil
The intense dry heat and dust of the summer
in north India calls for the creation of an internal
refuge or haven from the extremes of the external
world. The diurnal swing in temperature is
dampened by the mass of stone and earth, and the
air is further cooled by the evaporation of water in
the ventilation air flow path. This is exemplified
perfectly in the beautifully atmospheric Rai Pravina
Mahal in Orchaa (Ford and Hewitt, 1996) [Figs. 3a
and b]
. A mid-
summer visit to the Casa de Pilatos in Seville [Fig. 4a]
provides an experience of what can be achieved. A
central paved courtyard, searingly hot in the middle
of the day, is surrounded by narrow section
buildings that are linked by large openings to green
garden courts beyond. Heat rising from the paved
central court pulls cooler humidified air from the
shaded garden courts across the narrow rooms,
where the occupants appreciate both the lower
temperatures and the air movement.
Many aspects of the tradition outlined above were
reviewed by the designers of the Expo site in Seville
for the 1992 World Fair (Alvarez, 1991). This included
the 30m high cool towers of the Avenue of Europe,
which employed high-pressure water misting
nozzles (micronizers) to induce downdraught
cooling [Fig. 4b]. This technique of passive
downdraught evaporative cooling (PDEC) has only
recently been applied to buildings, but has
enormous potential to displace the need for
conventional air conditioning.
courtesy of:
downdraft cooling
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