Hot and restless…

We expected the cool of the night. The soothing breeze to kiss our necks so that we don’t have to wake up suddenly in the heat of the dark night, drenched in sweat. Sadly, Christmas doesn’t come in February so our wishes will not be met.

This is the tale of our user experience inside a beautiful architectural edifice that failed to protect us from the harsh weather conditions. I mean, isn’t protection from harsh weather conditions one of the core characteristics of “shelter”? I live on a hilly terrain in a tropical climate and in a third world. This means the heat waves its unforgiving wings and we get burned. We have temperatures as high as 38 °C in the daytime and 31 °C in the evenings. There are no adequate electrical power sources put in place to get the mechanical cooling fixtures working. Truthfully, this has been the case for 25 years of my existence.

What can we do about this from the architect’s POV? do we keep recycling the same old designs because it worked for a client so it should work for another?. Clearly, one size doesn’t fit all and building sites are different. Surely there are design strategies that we can adopt to make the client’s experience in the building a better one. This is architecture. It is our responsibility as architects to go to the end of the world (without causing strain on the earth of course..with all the carbon emissions from our cars) and bring design solutions.

Join me in my quest for architectural design interventions that can be adopted in building homes in the tropics. When we tackle this, we can walk barefoot in the park, grab a cup of cappuccino and discuss other design matters over a plate of wafers. Thank you for letting me vent. My name is Amaowoh by the way. This should be fun *wink*