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With respects to climate, these wind passages are a terrific example of vernacular architecture [1]. We have a lot to learn from desert communities for contempo
by zahma 5y ago
With respects to climate, these wind passages are a terrific example of vernacular architecture [1]. We have a lot to learn from desert communities for contemporary building purposes ( -- not talking about Arcosanti and that idiocy). Another easy example is M'zab [2] located in the Algerian Sahara. Historically, their buildings were made with thermal envelopes created by thick walls (up to 2m in some places) and using local quarry stone. That's important because it keeps the interior temperature regulated throughout the day and season.
All that changed when concrete was imported to reduce thermal efficiency and the CO2 emissions related to producing concrete and the non-stop air conditioning / heating as a result. In stark contrast to the original designs going back millenia, it's always been laughable to me that countries like Saudi (King Abdullah Economic City), Egypt, or UAE think they can build way out into the desert and not suffer the repercussions of the sun's relentlessness in shiny glass and metal buildings.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_architecture#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernacular_architecture#Climat...
2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%27zab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%27zab
- FredPret 5y ago> think they can build way out into the desert …but they can, all it takes is the lifeblood of civilization: energy. It need not even be oil-driven, though of course in their case it is.
- sokoloff 5y agoThis strikes me as a case particularly well-suited/well-matched for solar.
- FredPret 5y agoExactly, when the sun is hottest, the AC is blasting. The only catch is that you might need to heat at night even in summer in some parts.
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoYou would think there would be traditional solutions for that, why not a put a cart full of dark stones in the sun during the day and then roll it inside in the cold of night? Modern variations on that theme could store thermal energy in plenty of equally-simple ways.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThere are all sorts of things that are technically possible but the materials handling requirements do not make them cheap/efficient enough to do practically without electricity. See aluminum ore processing for example.
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoA house may be "a machine for living in" but the scale of the solutions needed aren't as serious as industrial processes like mining surely? I haven't lived in a structure using them, but there are Phase Change[1] insulations out there, for example. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_material https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_material
- FredPret 5y agoProbably less work to just have a lot of blankets!
- Retric 5y agoYou want to maximize how much the house cools at night to minimize daytime temperature. Then to maintain a comfortable temperature just add thermal mass.
- Ar-Curunir 5y agoIn the Middle East, during summer, you don't need heating at night; it's still easily north of 30C
- FredPret 5y ago
- toast0 5y agoSolar panel efficiency goes down in high temperatures, so it wouldn't be great in really hot places.
- candiodari 5y agoSo, wait, you're seriously advocating 2 meter thick walls (yeah, I know, let's say starting at 1/2 meter) as a solution for a dense city? Price at build time is hardly the only problem. Good luck with that.
- BoiledCabbage 5y agoCould you make your comment more helpful? At the moment it can be summarized as "more concrete is more expensive". It's seems you have more thoughts on it, but it's hard to infer much else from it.
- stonemetal12 5y agoHe mentions density, which to me all most always comes down to height. How tall of a building can you build with meter thick walls?
- jazzyjackson 5y agoThe monadnock building in Chicago [0] partially answers your question: “ The Monadnock's final height was calculated to be the highest economically viable for a load-bearing wall design, requiring walls 6 feet (1.8 m) thick at the bottom and 18 inches (46 cm) thick at the top. Greater height would have required walls of such thickness that they would have reduced the rentable space too greatly.” [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock_Building https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock_Building
- josephcsible 5y agoMy reading was that the issue is the massively increased footprint of every building, not the cost of the concrete.
- CuriouslyC 5y agoThat's only a problem if you're building with expensive materials. Build those walls with earth and aggregate and the biggest expense is gas for the heavy equipment.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mc32 5y agoWould stone slabs for housing scale for tens of millions living in this desert? Maybe it would, but I have to imagine the mass of resources required would go up. Concrete with insulation is cheaper and less massive to build. Mud and fiber or wattle have good properties too. Would we have enough resources for building housing for tens of millions out of these materials? As one offs we can find a multitude of good solutions. The problem is finding affordable mass produced options for all the people who can’t afford iteresting bespoke solutions.
- fao_ 5y ago> As one offs we can find a multitude of good solutions. The problem is finding affordable mass produced options for all the people who can’t afford iteresting bespoke solutions. Exactly, because the resources actually exist but nobody can profit off it. Our economic system repeatedly drives us away from sane and coherent solutions to our problems. Maybe we should look at changing that.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI hear that argument a lot in the context of drugs -- you can't patent a natural remedy so there's no big corporation pushing for it's adoption. But concrete is not like that. The reason it's so widely used is precisely because it's easy to use widely. I mean, 2m thick stone walls are surely great if space and energy constraints allow you to put them up ...
- fridif 5y agoLet those who want 2m stone pay for it, and let all others suffer in ignorance
- euroderf 5y agoIf they're so great, why don't they make an appearance in the Dune series? More seriously, Frank Herbert did his research, but these do not appear (AFAIK).