How powerful was the ancient "air-conditioned room"? In 2021, the Austrian Pavilion at the Dubai World Expo took advantage of the principle of ancient air-conditioned rooms to build 38 cone buildings without air conditioning but very cool.
The 38 intersecting cone-shaped buildings in the Austrian Pavilion are very modern and artistic, and they are completely incompatible with the ancient buildings, the 38 cones have different heights, but they are connected to each other, and the air will flow in different cones to achieve the cooling effect of the interior.
The reason why these buildings can be cooled, the principle and inspiration is actually derived from the local traditional wind tower building, the original intention of the designer's design, is to establish an equal dialogue between the traditional building and the intelligent Austrian climate engineering.
Because the use of natural cooling of building structures can greatly reduce or even avoid the use of air conditioning, in the case of intensified greenhouse effect today, the wind tower does not need electricity to achieve indoor cooling effect, which has great significance for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Austria's windtrap tower is so powerful?
In fact, wind traps are not unique to Austria, there are wind traps in West Asia and North Africa, but the earliest wind capture technology came from Egypt 3300 years ago.
Researchers Chris Solberg and Julie Richie of Weber State University in Utah say that many buildings in Egypt have very thick walls with almost no windows facing the sun, but almost all of the prevailing winds have vents on one side, and correspondingly, there are vents on the other side.
However, there are also many people who do not agree with this view, they believe that the earliest birthplace of the wind tower is in Iran, but there is no historical data or cultural evidence that can accurately give the origin of the wind tower.
But what is certain is that in West Asia and North Africa, wind towers are widely used, such as the city of Yazd, located in the desert region of central Iran, which is called the "City of Wind Towers".
Yazd is said to have the largest number of wind traps in the world, which give people living in hot, dry plateaus a touch of coolness, and its cooling principle has amazed archaeologists, architects and engineers.
Most of the wind traps are built on top of the building and look like a chimney, with a collection outlet on the outside, a vertical tubular structure, partitions and roof plates, and some guide rods that resist lateral winds to enhance the integrity of the structure.
When the prevailing wind in the desert (in Yazd, mainly the northwest cool breeze known as the "Isfahan wind") blows through the windtrap tower, it will be caught by the catcher's outlet.
In most parts of West Asia and North Africa, the temperature difference between day and night is very large, the day is hot and the night is cold, so the wind trap is cooled at night, the air temperature inside the tower is relatively low, and in the morning, the air flow outside can be squeezed down the vertical pipe by using the wind pressure to send fresh air into the house, which is the anti-chimney effect.
The wind will gradually cool down in the process of flowing into the room, and part of the wind will enter the living room, discharging the hot air in the house to achieve the cooling effect.
The other part will enter the basement, pass through the reservoir in the basement, form a comfortable cold air by humidification, and then enter the courtyard through the ground opening, moisturizing the trees in the courtyard and creating a cool environment in the house.
As the hot air in the house gradually becomes more, the other side of the wind trap tower will form a negative pressure, so that the hot air in the room rises, so that the hot air is discharged through the air outlet like the fireworks during cooking, and the cool air in the yard can be replenished into the room through the window, at which time the anti-chimney effect becomes the chimney effect.
In this way, the ancients used the air flow formed by the falling cold air and the rising of the warm air to turn the house into an air-conditioned room, which had lived in a hot place for thousands of years.
Traditional windtraps are square vertical towers with four directional or sloping openings. However, according to the climatic conditions, wind direction, customs and different needs of people in different regions, the location and number of wind outlet and outlet of the wind tower will also be different.
There are one-way, two-way, or even multi-directional designs, such as in some extremely hot or strong wind areas, the wind trap tower can even be 6-sided or 8-sided, and some will also install blades and shafts inside to improve the efficiency of wind capture.
In some arid areas, wind towers are also built on canals, because canals in these areas are built underground to prevent evaporation, completely shielding them from sunlight. The wind tower is built on top of it, which can cool the hot air inhaled into the canal and then send it into the house.
Some people ask, if you want the wind to blow, is it not good to open the window directly?
Don't forget, as I said earlier, these areas are basically hot during the day and cold at night, the days are long and the nights are short, the walls need to be built with insulation materials to be thicker, and the cooling effect is not as good as the wind trap tower if the window is ventilated.
Especially in some desert countries, window ventilation also faces the trouble of sand entering the room, and the use of ventilation towers, although there will be more or less sand into the room, but there will not be so much window ventilation.
The wind trap tower, although very popular in hot areas, but in the West Asia is limited and not very easy to use, because the main role of the wind tower is to cool down, and in some cold places in winter, the presence of the wind tower will pour cold air into the warm room, so that in winter, the use of the wind tower family will be very guilty.
Therefore, the wind catcher used in some countries is based on the wind trap tower, adding some modern materials and technologies to improve. Not only can you control the amount of air entering by yourself, but you can also turn off the wind catcher in winter.
And the wind catcher will not have a huge noise, it is not difficult to repair, and more importantly, it will not increase carbon dioxide emissions.
Nowadays, many countries have used the principle of wind traps, and in some places modern wind traps have been installed, and in 1979-1994, about 7,000 different wind traps have been installed on public buildings.
Now Iran is also working to repair and update the old wind tower, hoping to revive the wind tower.
Parum Kellha Sander of the University of Ilam in Iran said:
"To use these technologies, there needs to be some change in cultural attitudes, and people need to look to the past and understand why energy conservation is important."
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