Natural Cooling

Another blisteringly hot country, especially in the summer months, the Persians came up with an ingenous method of chanelling wind-catchers. A wind-catcher was a building specially designed to trap wind in hollowed out spaces and funnelling it down to the lower levels of a building, cooling off the inhabitants as it reduced the heat of the wind. It is also called Badgir, this is a wind tower a traditional Persian architectural element used for centuries for natural ventilation of buildings. Badgirs are still used today in a wide variety of ways. A badgir usually has at least two vertical channels. The city Yazd is home to a system of ancient engineering marvels that include an underground refrigeration structure called Yakhchal, an underground irrigation system called Qanats.

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