opposite: the texture of Cham, Iran – the mountain, the courtyard, the badgir and the qanat. Shade and breezes are maximised by the archi- tecture in public squares and private courtyards. this page: water and wind in Yadz, Iran. Water comes from the moun- tain. Badgirs catch and channel the wind, pulling it across courtyards and down underground, cooling the water stored in the qanat system. The dome is the top of the quanat water reservoir. Badgirs below: the Applied Computing and Engineering Sciences building at Sir Sandford Fleming College. It uses a badgir to pull the wind into the building, drawing it down to the ground floor where it picks up heat and rises back out the leeward side of the badgir.
of the building, creating a difference in pressure that pulls the breeze downward, releasing some of it at the ground floor over a shallow body of water before it enters the living area. Part of the captured wind is funnelled to a deep well directly below the tower, which is connected to yet another well, as deep and a few metres to its side. Air that passes through these reservoirs on the way to the cellar drops in temperature by about twenty degrees during the day. In the challenging heat of the desert, water is brought to the city by an underground water collecting system, a qanat , to storage tanks, aab-anbars . A qanat is built of numerous wells and a long canal that connects water storage to a water reservoir located kilometres away at the foot of the mountain. The wells are also part of the construction of the qanat, ensuring that the alignment of the canal is correct. The canals are well below the ground surface
to minimise water evaporation when daily temperatures are about 50°C – the reverse of the frost penetration we are familiar with here. These are sophisticated ways of building in extreme conditions. Studying them can shift the way we approach architecture here. The Applied Computing and Engineering Sciences (ACES) building in Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough, Ontario, for example, has a natural ventilation system very much like the badgirs of Iran. Three thermal chimneys oriented in windward and leeward directions, together with a central galleria, provide natural ventilation of the building, maximising its fresh air supply. Although this is but a small step forward in our recovery of basic vernacular architectural principles, it must be seen as a constructive effort towards a more sustainable building culture. By studying, we can decipher and apply centuries’ worth of practice to reverse
our ineptitude in building in harmony with the environment.
Modern methods of design and construction were inherently critical of old techniques that required little energy and little imported technology. Perhaps the time has now come to take a step backward in order to move forward in a safe, sustainable, affordable, accessible way.
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weather matters: On Site review 21
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