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A Clay Screen Provides Simple-Tech Cooling

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Sometimes the very oldest climate cooling ideas are best. Ecooler has won a 21st Century green design award for an idea based on a 5,000 year old cooling idea from the Middle East.

Israeli designers Mey and Boaz Kah created a system of hollow ceramic tiles for natural passive cooling and won third place in the iida awards 2010 for this idea. This charming design for cooling a house is based on very simple-tech passive cooling – just run cold water through a decorative clay screen.

This idea springs from a combination of two ancient traditions of Middle Eastern home design. The jara and the mashrabiya.

The jara is an ancient jug that has been used in the Middle East for 5,000 years for cooling water by seepage and evaporation through the earthen clay. Anything made of earth can be a thermal sink. Earth has long been used for keeping things cool. Cellars dug into the ground use the cooling properties of earth for cooling.

The mashrabiya is a modular screen popular in the Middle East that is made of decorative hollow blocks. These provide a sense of privacy while allowing daylight and cool breezes to flow through a home.

By combining the two elements, the designers  create a simple cooling screen. Because, like the original concrete blocks, each block of screen is separate – any size opening can be screened, so it is suited to create large or small screen walls.

The iida awards are organized by designboom in collaboration with Incheon Metroplitan City to recognize the best sustainable design ideas.

Source: designboom via Green Prophet