9 Ways Traditional Architecture is Greening Buildings Today
1. White Roofs
White walls reflect heat and light away from the building keeping it cooler in side — studies by students at Berkley found that a white roof can reduce a building’s energy consumption from air-conditioning up to 20 percent.
Traditional whitewashing using slaked lime and chalk has natural antibacterial properties so water run off is cleaned and could potentially be reused.
Thick white window frames and on exterior and interior walls reflects and distributes daylight into through small windows, thus maximising light while minimising heat entering the building, which is thoroughly insulated with thick plaster walls.
Integrated facade design along with new technologies of triple glazing can reduce heating requirements dramatically and by using thermal imaging technology weak points in the system can dramatically improve perimeter interior differences in temperature.
2. Insulation
Traditional architecture in hot and cold climates used insulation as a key strategy in regulating interior temperatures.
The low narrow entrance prevents heat escaping new technologies of triple glazing can reduce heating.
The temperature inside an igloo can be up to 30 degrees different to the outside temperature.
3 High Ventilated Roofs
Domes and high vaulted ceilings let air out the top.
At night the roof is exposed to more of the cool night air which cools the interior.
A circular shape is the easiest to heat in winter and has the advantage of being more wind resistant.
4 Integrated design
Felt on walls for insulation that can be rolled up to show ventilating and strengthening laticework underneath.
Sheeps wool was used as insulation in panels so that the structure can be taken down and set up again as the houses followed the nomadic peoples.
Interior lattice not only provided the structure with some movement but kept out wild animals.
A circular shape is the easiest to heat in winter and has the advantage of being more wind resistant.
5 Green roofs
The Faroe islands grass was grown on the roofs for thermal and acoustic protection.
The earth provided insulation during the cold winters.
Modern day example
Modern ‘green roofs’ as they are now referred to, and even green walls, are blanketing Asia —with many commercial buildings developing roof gardens and even growing produce on their buildings. In hot urban environments this can reduce the temperature of not just that building but can reduce ambient and reflected temperature in the surrounding area by several degrees.
6 Lifting & Raising
Pole houses in Sulawesi province, Indonesia, were able to catch natural ventilation through floor and walls as they sit over the cooling water.
Even modern office buildings can benefit from raised podiums and tool ponds to make ambient places to sit such as this modern green star platinum rated building in Singapore.
Water radiates heat less strongly than land for most of the day.
Steeply pitched and gabled roofs keep water from coming inside.
7 Ventilation
Courtyards help circulate air that cools when passing in, through and between the shaded walkways and cloisters.
Intricate lattice work that ventilated interior spaces with the cool air but still allowed light through.
8 Adapting to Environment
Adobe inside the wooden struts absorbs the shock.
Traditional Japanese towers survive many earthquakes as the heavy tiles tiles slide off while the rest of the light weight tower is more flexible.
David Fisher’s revolutionary ‘spinning towers concept’ was also planned to be built in a modular fashion that had earthquake resistant principles.
9 Natural Air Conditioning
Wind towers were used extensively to cool indoor spaces in the hot dry climates of the middle east and the ttechnology behind their use is having a resurgence by green architects and engineers looking to reduce energy use.
Hot dry air comes across the desert above the busle of the streets below [at the top where the air goes in.
It is then directed to was across the floor of the building keeping residents living and working there cool during the heat of the day.
Air cools as it is sucked down into the building.
Modern day example
Various engineers and designers are now lookng at cooling strategies even for super high tech, yet low energy cooling based on the same principles.
