Hot housing - low tech

An approach to climate-friendly design in hot arid zones with a focus on architectural design, as well as ecological, economic and social aspects. “We can’t sleep anymore, because the house doesn’t cool at night.“ This comment was the trigger to investigate the design of residential buildings in hot regions. Taking Cairo as an example and considering the construction activity there, one concludes that the housing development disregards the present climatic parameters. Assuming that the energy generation of fossile sources will become more and more expensive in the near future threshold countries will face existential difficulties. In addition to the econmic situation air pollution and climate change will become a problem on global scale. As a result the following issue is discussed: how this affects architecture. The investigated architectural process is narrowed down to housing in the hot-arid regions. To respect economic and social facts different building techniques were considered. Therefore the subtitle is : “low - tech and low - cost”. Energy consumption, energy saving, high - tech or low - tech building construction, heating and cooling by sun and wind were considered by several examples. A main goal is also how those buildings should be designed in the future, especially under the relationship of architectural design outside and light and space inside. Moreover ecological questions like water supply and green areas / gardens are mentioned. On these ground a new design is necessary. On several pages prototypes for a new kind of individual buldings are presented, related to the author’s investigations at Stuttgart University and the German University in Cairo. The relationship of form – space – light was investigated under the respect of climatic, ecological and economic factors. Thus qualities of traditional arab architecture like cross ventilation and sun protection were combined with a modern design and with heat generation by sun in winter. In the end considerations on settlement and mobilty issues are discussed in relationship to climatic questions in Urban Design. Student works of german and egyptan students are rounding off the publication.