Green Building Design

Traditional building forms did not spring, fully formed, from the mind of an ancient omnipodent architect. Construction materials and techniques have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. While there have been, and continue to be, brilliant designers creating truely original buildings, we should not disregard the past and reinvent the wheel each time we design a new home. One of the many examples of energy efficient designs from the ancient world is a Persian architectural element called a windcatcher, or Badgir. A Badgir uses the natural environment to cool a home. Below is a schematic of a Badgir in conjuction with a Qanat. For a lot more information about windcatchers and passive cooling explore the results of this Google query