Cool Houses

Achieving and maintaining a comfortable temperature inside buildings has historically been one of the main challenges for architects and engineers the world over.

Dr Subhi Al-Azzawi takes us to 19th-century Baghdad, where the naturally cooled indigenous courtyard houses managed to maintain a temperature difference between exterior and interior only achieved in the Western world 75 years later by electrical means. Discover how Iraqi master builders of the past used processes such as convection and evaporative cooling and what modern designers can learn from them.

In this era all alternatives to energy-intensive air conditioning are needed. Award-winning expert on sustainable architecture Lynne Sullivan explores advances in low-energy cooling designs. What new technologies and solutions can help us design the buildings of tomorrow?

Come and discuss with our experts the past, present and future of cool houses.

Speakers:

Subhi Al-Azzawi, ARB Architect, Kent
Lynne Sullivan RIBA, sustainableBYdesign

Facilitator:

Anne-Maria Brennan, Principal Lecturer at London South Bank University

Event organised by: Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation

This event runs alongside the 1001 Inventions exhibition hosted by the Science Museum.