Revitalization of Vernacular Passive Cooling Strategies in Modern Buildings

The rapidly growing world energy use has already raised concerns over supply difficulties, exhaustion of energy resources and heavy environmental impacts. The building sectors in most IEA countries consumed approximately 40% of the global energy while the major part of this amount is devoted to cooling systems.A comfortable interior condition in summers can be achieved by means of three-tier approach; heat avoidance, passive cooling and mechanical systems. While all of the vernacular buildings provided comfortable condition by means of first and second strategies (heat avoidance and passive cooling), 90% of modern buildings use mechanical systems to reach the similar situation. Although it seems almost impossible to reuse these elements in modern buildings, there are some strategies to revitalize vernacular solutions in modern design. The main objective of this paper is to study the new cooling technologies that root back in ancient concepts.To achieve this goal various passive cooling devices in vernacular architecture of Iran is introduced at first. Then the modern substitutions for each of these devices is explored.Investigations indicated that most of the modern and high tech buildings which are assumed as successful projects in terms of sustainability and technology root back to vernacular architecture of that region. It seems that the vernacular architecture that is environmentally relevant to its region can provide an inspiration for future innovative approaches.

کلیدواژه ها:

Passive Cooling ، Vernacular ، Modern ، Architecture ، Revitalization