Living Architecture — Journal
Insights & Expertise
Expertise
5 min read
Cooling without air conditioning: the termite mound myth
You hear it everywhere: the termite mound is said to be a masterpiece of natural air conditioning, and copying it would cool our buildings with no machine at all. It is a lovely story. Only the mound does not cool: it breathes. And what actually cools a building is simpler, older, and already in our guidebooks.
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Expertise
5 min read
The oasis courtyard: cooling without wasting water
On an August afternoon in Córdoba, you step out of a sun-crushed street into a patio where the air is several degrees cooler. Yet almost nothing evaporates there: shade does most of the work, and shade costs not a drop. What that know-how can teach our courtyards.
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Expertise
5 min read
Unsealing a school playground: soil as sponge, soil as cooling system
In high summer, asphalt burns underfoot and every child crowds into the one patch of shade going. Under that sterile crust, a whole soil is waiting to drink the rain and cool the air again. Here is how to give it back.
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Expertise
5 min read
Natural pools: how does the water stay clean without chlorine?
At the bottom of my garden, a pond dug in 2005 has kept its water impeccable in every season, with no chlorine and no UV lamp. What keeps it clean grows, flowers and sinks its roots into the water.
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Expertise
5 min read
Green roof: blanket or habitat?
From above, two green roofs look alike. Stand on them and the difference is obvious: one is a blanket, thin, uniform, quiet; the other has hollows, mounds, a flat stone, a puddle barely worth the name where a bird lands. They are not the same roof.
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Expertise
6 min read
Open ground or a planted building? Soil first
Under a tree planted in open ground, water sinks in, coolness settles, life moves through, with no pump and no maintenance contract. Before sending plants up the façade, look at what the soil already knows how to do.
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