The Malqaf Edition

On buildings, heat, and problemsolving

Colin here. A heat wave is grabbing attention in the states and Europe. Italy is set for record temperatures and tourists and residents are sweltering. As temperatures surge, I’ve been intrigued by the future of architecture and how buildings can be more green, use less energy to cool, and also reflect heat. And, in increasingly unstable environments, buildings with certain attributes can weather storms and changes to environment. Turns out the geodesic dome is coming back in fashion! 

The Times recently ran an interesting package:

But perhaps no type of resilient home design inspires devotion quite like geodesic domes. In 2005, Hurricane Rita devastated Pecan Island, a small community in southwest Louisiana, destroying most of the area’s few hundred houses. Joel Veazey’s 2,300-square-foot dome was not one of them. He only lost a few shingles. “People came to my house and apologized to me and said: ‘We made fun of you because of the way your house looks. We should never have done that. This place is still here, when our homes are gone,’” Mr. Veazey, a retired oil worker, said. Dr. Max Bégué lost his house near New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. In 2008, he built and moved into a dome on the same property, which has survived every storm since, including Hurricane Ida. Two features give domes their ability to withstand wind. First, the domes are composed of many small triangles, which can carry more load than other shapes. Second, the shape of the dome channels wind around it, depriving that wind of a flat surface to exert force on.

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Why is this interesting? 

The wormhole on geodesic domes as an architecture trend also reminded me of some ways architecture has solved climate problems in history. There are two features I’ve been fascinated with in Arab and Persian architecture that uses wind to cool in an ingenious and natural way. These climes get exceedingly hot, and in history, different methods of building were used to provide a natural AC. According to Seeley: 

1. The Malqaf is a tower used to catch the air situated in a high position on top of the buildings, with a crown of column around facing the dominant winds. During the night the tower walls absorb heat from the air contained in the tower and the denser cooled air goes down inside the building; during the day, the walls serve to keep the temperature lower (in presence of wind, this process is accelerated).

2. The Bad-ghir (literally “wind catcher”) is another system used in the Gulf. The process underlying is thermic ventilation (convection): the structure is a tower with light walls (usually square-based) and divided in height or more sectors, squared or triangular. Irrespective of the location where the tower is situated, the season or the time of the day, at least two consecutive sectors will be in the shade and this will determine, inside the tower, a double parallel airflow of exhaust hot air and incoming cool one. The Bad-ghir also takes advantage of the same principle behind the Malqaf, of hot air going up and cold air going down

New environments and climate challenges will usher in new methods of architecture. It will be interesting to see “armored” houses that can shut up like an armadillo, or the current coastal houses being reinforced and built on stilts. Climate change is undoubtedly a problem, and it will be interesting to see the new forms of modern ingenuity that comes about to cope. (CJN)