Traditional Architecture Essay

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Traditional architecture has evolved over thousands of years to develop various cooling strategies for each type of climate, without using any mechanical or electrical cooling. Incorporating these traditional cooling techniques in a building design can improve the indoor thermal comfort with low energy consumption. It mainly relies on three main principles: reducing the amount of heat entering the building, modifying the heat gain and furthermore, removing the heat that is already present inside the building (Gupta, 1981).
Reduce Heat Gain
It is of paramount importance to minimize the heat entering a building in order to improve the effectiveness of traditional cooling techniques. It requires the complete or partial exclusion of heat radiation …show more content…

The mass of a building, typically contained in walls, floors, partitions, is usually constructed with materials of low conductivity that absorb most of the heat during the day; hence, cooling the building (). During the night time, when the outer temperature is lower, the mass of the building emits the absorbed heat into the environment; therefore, maintaining the thermal comfort (). Traditional buildings like Mehrangarh Fort have thick walls which are designed to provide thermal insulation and security. The material used in Mehrangarh Fort is mud in form of cob (). The term cob is most accurately used to describe “a wall system made of a mixture of clay, soil, sand, and straw, sculpted in place while wet” (). Generally, their thickness varies between 8 inches and 3 feet and is most commonly used to support the weight of the roof that rests on them. An example of such existing ancient architecture is the Hawa Mahal in India. It uses large thermal mass structures coupled with night ventilation to reduce it’s interior temperature by 30% (). Today most of the buildings in Bikaner, India are constructed using the same technique to reduce the cooling load. According to a recent study by xyz (), this technique has reduced the internal temperature by 10 degree Celsius in

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