Mexican Office Tower without Air Conditioning
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01. 5.07
If one ever needed proof of the importance of design in dealing with our current crises, one might compare these two stories: In the village of Kuujjuaq on the Arctic Circle, 10 air conditioners were installed for 25 office workers. "These are the times when the far north has to have air conditioners now to function," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a leading campaigner for the rights of 155,000 Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland."Our Arctic homes are made to be airtight for the cold and do not 'breathe' well in the heat with this warming trend," she said. (Independent) Meanwhile, in Guadalajara Mexico, which is a bit warmer than the Arctic, Catalan architect Carme Pinos has designed an office building that is supposed to keep cool without AC through careful shading, natural ventilation, fans and convection.
The triangular office floors are clad in a double skin: the floors were first wrapped in a glass facade [a great deal of which consists of operable windows], which is then masked by the horizontal wood slat paneling seen in the photographs. Workers can step out on to a grating system and push/pull these panels into their desired positions, providing control over the level of daylighting in their specific work space.
This ‘double skin’ provides enough natural ventilation that the building rarely [maybe never] needs air conditioning [remember, it’s in Guadalajara]. Natural ventilation [and lighting] is also utilize within the open central ‘atrium’ space, thanks to those large three storey porches/terraces described earlier in the article. This effectively slices the depth of the building in half, providing this natural lighting and ventilation of both sides of each of the three office triangles., thus providing cross-ventilation and probably a nice draft due to the stack effect in the central opening atrium. via ::myninjaplease
Wow. That interior space is gorgeous. Does it reflect the spanish "courtyard" tradition.
Sadly, in the US there would be a flotilla of crappy retail carts parked in the interior space, selling water bottles and knick knacks and unhealthy snacks.
I'd imagine it's quite a bit more humid in the Arctic during the summer than it is in Guadalahara. 80 degrees at 90% humidity is a lot more uncomfortable than 100 degrees and 10% humidity.
When my family took our vacation to Colorado a few years ago, we Pennsylvanians, who are used to high humidity, thought it was in the mid 70s and were shocked when we drove by a bank thermometer that said it was in the upper nineties.
agreed, humidity does play a factor in feeling heat and cold, but the point is that it's well designed for the area and climate. filling a building with air conditioning units is a solution that works everywhere (and nowhere) because it ignores the surroundings. why couldn't the air conditioned building have a grass roof, for example? (don't those work well in that situation?) anyway, that's all. don't knock this design because it's not universal, that's why we love it)
I love the functionality. But the building is ugly. The outside looks like tenement apartments in Bankok. And the inside reminds of 70's-era concrete monstrosities.
This comes from my favorite site ;)
that building is gorgeous...
Ugly? AC is ugly. Clinging to conventions based on flimsy, Disney-like nostalgia is exactly what is holding back real progress in how we live and impact our environment- ugly. Give up preconceived notions, give up on labels such as "looks like a tenament" or "concrete monstrosities". The great thing that can be said about efforts in the 70s is that they were wrestling with addressing all the problems that we are plagued with, without probably as clear a picture of the scale of the challenge, or threat. It is time for new ways of thinking, seeing, designing and living.
I think it would look better in a different color. I wonder if that would change its functionality at all.
I was an architecture student in Guatemala in 19XX...before you were born. I visited many un-air conditioned homes and public buildings. The most imaginative technique I noticed was that of bug-screening the ceilings of the closets, and louvering their doors. This had two benefits: convective airflow that kept the houses livable, and also kept mildew from forming on the clothes and shoes within.