Passive cooling techniques utilize natural forces like wind and evaporation to regulate building temperatures without mechanical systems. This document discusses several passive cooling strategies like site planning and orientation to maximize shade and ventilation, buffering structures with trees, stack ventilation using natural heat transfer and chimneys, evaporative cooling with water features, and traditional courtyard houses and earthen architecture which provide natural thermal regulation. Passive cooling is important to reduce energy usage, lower emissions, and create healthier indoor spaces.

1. Passive Cooling Techniques
in Architecture: Keeping
Your Buildings Cool
Naturally
By: M.Tariq, Architect & Urban Ecologist
Assistant Professor & Erasmus Mundus Scholar
from UK, Finland & Spain

2. What is Passive Cooling?
● Utilizing natural forces, wind, and evaporation to regulate a
building's temperature without mechanical systems.
● Environmentally friendly and cost-effective approach to
thermal comfort.

3. Why Passive Cooling is Important?
● Reducing dependence on energy-intensive air conditioning
systems.
● Lowering greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate
change.
● Creating healthier and more comfortable indoor environments

4. positioning
Strategic positioning to
maximize shade and
natural ventilation.
prevailing
Utilizing prevailing
winds for cross-
ventilation.
Site Planning and Orientation:
Buffering
Buffering structures
with trees and
vegetation.

5. Stack Ventilation
● The stack effect is a phenomenon that occurs because of the
natural heat transfer. The warm air has a lower density than
the cold air and rises to the upper part of the building,
chimney, towers.

6. A cooling potential of up to 12 ˚C of indoor air
temperature was identified

8. Evaporative Cooling:
● Roof ponds, fountains, or water curtains to cool incoming air
through evaporation.
● Planting greenery around buildings to increase humidity and
promote evaporative cooling.

9. Fountains or misting installations can lower air
temperatures by an average of 0.7 to 3°C.

10. Traditional Courtyard Houses
● The shading effects of the trees on the ground and on the
south facing the windows of the building.

11. Earthen Architecture
● Mud is a bad conductor of heat. During summer season, the
outside temperature is more than the temperature inside the
mud so we feel cooler in mud house.