Ancient Climate Intelligence: What If We Brought It Back Into Our Homes?
From Persian windcatchers to Indian stepwells:
old technologies for a new Mediterranean house
We often speak about sustainable architecture as if we were inventing it.
But long before electricity, air conditioning or mechanical ventilation, people were already designing sophisticated responses to extreme climates.
Not because they were trying to be “sustainable”.
Because they had no choice but to understand the place where they lived.
Across Iran, India, North Africa, the Middle East and the Mediterranean, architecture evolved through centuries of observation.
Where does the wind come from?
How does water move?
Where does the sun fall in August?
What happens when we descend into the earth?
How can a wall store coolness?
How can a courtyard create its own microclimate?
How much light do we really need to let inside?
What fascinates me today is not the idea of reproducing these buildings.
It is the possibility of extracting their intelligence and combining it with contemporary architecture, landscape design, engineering and technology.
Because perhaps the ecological house of the future does not need to look ancient at all.
It simply needs to remember what we once knew.
1. IRAN — The windcatcher: let the house breathe
The ancient idea
In the desert city of Yazd, Iran, architecture became an extraordinary response to heat and scarcity.
The historic city still contains badgirs, or windcatchers, together with sunken courtyards, thick earthen walls and qanats. UNESCO specifically identifies these elements as part of the system through which Yazd's inhabitants created comfortable microclimates in an extremely arid environment.
One of the most beautiful surviving examples can be found at the Dowlat Abad Garden in Yazd, within this historic landscape.
The principle of the windcatcher is wonderfully simple: instead of sealing the building from the climate and mechanically moving air afterwards, the architecture itself interacts with air movement.
What can we learn from it today?
A contemporary house can be designed around:
low-level air intake → protected cool space → cross-ventilation → high-level hot-air exhaust.
Stairwells, double-height spaces, roof vents and carefully positioned openings can participate in natural airflow.
And this is precisely where studying the landscape before designing the house becomes important.
Because a windcatcher without understanding the prevailing wind is just a beautiful chimney.
Ancient lesson: Don't create ventilation after designing the house.
Modern translation: Design the section of the house around air movement from the beginning.
2. IRAN — The qanat: move water without fighting gravity
The second extraordinary Persian technology is almost invisible.
For thousands of years, underground channels have transported groundwater over considerable distances using gravity alone. UNESCO describes the Persian qanat as a sophisticated system that supported settlements, agriculture, reservoirs, mills, irrigation networks and gardens; several historic qanats remain functional today.
Yazd itself developed around this relationship between underground water, settlement and architecture.
What does a qanat teach a contemporary house?
Obviously, most homeowners are not going to excavate kilometres of underground tunnels.
But the principle is fascinating:
Water should move through a property intelligently rather than simply being evacuated from it.
Imagine beginning a house by mapping:
roof water → storage → overflow → garden → infiltration → reuse.
A contemporary version could combine rainwater harvesting, gravity-fed irrigation, swales, permeable surfaces, underground cisterns and planted areas.
Instead of:
rain → drain → sewer
we could think:
rain → resource → movement → vegetation → soil.
And suddenly landscape architecture becomes part of the building's water infrastructure.
3. INDIA — The stepwell: descend into coolness
Perhaps my favourite example comes from India.
Stepwells — vavs in Gujarat — developed as sophisticated subterranean systems for accessing and storing water.
One of the most extraordinary surviving examples is Rani-ki-Vav in Patan, Gujarat, built in the 11th century. It descends through seven levels toward the well and reaches approximately 23 metres at its deepest tank level. UNESCO describes it simultaneously as functional water architecture and an extraordinary architectural monument.
Another beautiful reference is the Adalaj Stepwell, near Ahmedabad, a five-storey structure where shaded underground landings create noticeably cooler conditions than the exposed exterior.
But again, we don't need to copy the monument.
We need to understand the principle.
What if we created a miniature stepwell?
Imagine a house on a Mediterranean slope.
Instead of flattening the terrain, we descend three or four steps.
A small patio sits partially below ground.
Its walls provide shade.
Stone provides thermal mass.
Plants protect its edges.
Perhaps a small water basin occupies its lowest point where climate and water resources make that sensible.
A bedroom or summer living room opens onto it.
Suddenly, topography becomes climate technology.
Your image of the miniature stepwell fits perfectly here.
The modern stepwell does not need to be monumental. Sometimes three metres of intelligent section can change how a space feels.
4. THE ARAB WORLD — The mashrabiya:
filter instead of block
Across parts of the Middle East and North Africa, the mashrabiya developed as a sophisticated interface between interior and exterior.
Its wooden latticework could provide privacy while reducing direct solar exposure and permitting airflow. UNESCO notes its historic use in regions including Egypt, Iraq and the Hejaz, alongside other passive ventilation strategies.
This principle feels incredibly contemporary.
Because our typical solution today is often:
huge glass façade → too much solar gain → blind → air conditioning.
What if the façade itself did more work?
The contemporary translation
A second skin could be made from:
terracotta screens, locally produced ceramic, timber latticework, perforated metal, stone or contemporary composite materials.
Its density could even vary according to solar orientation.
More closed to the west.
More open to the north.
Designed according to daylight rather than purely aesthetics.
Ancient lesson: control light before it becomes heat.
Modern translation: treat the façade as a climatic filter, not simply a transparent boundary.
5. ANDALUSIA — The patio: create your own microclimate
Then we arrive much closer to home.
At the Alhambra and Generalife in Granada, water, courtyards, vegetation, shade and architecture form one interconnected system.
The historic hydraulic network brought water from the Darro River toward the Generalife and supplied gardens, agricultural areas, pools and other parts of the complex.
Research published by the Alhambra specifically describes the bioclimatic logic of Hispano-Muslim architecture: patios organised the dwelling around a cooler protected environment; vegetation and water participated in the microclimate; porticoes acted as thermal buffers; orientation and controlled openings protected interiors from summer solar gain while allowing winter sun.
This is perhaps one of the easiest principles to bring back.
The contemporary micro-patio
A patio does not need to belong to a palace.
Imagine just 8–12 m² carved out of a relatively modest house.
A tree.
A permeable floor.
Climbing vegetation.
A small fountain or basin where appropriate.
Openings from several rooms.
Shade from above.
Suddenly the centre of the house is no longer a corridor.
It is a living climatic space.
And your house breathes through its heart.
6. PERSIA — The garden as climate infrastructure
There is another Persian idea I would absolutely include: the garden itself.
The Persian garden was never simply a collection of ornamental plants.
Water, shade, geometry, trees and architecture were conceived together.
And this is where the landscape designer becomes fundamental.
A tree planted in the correct place isn't decoration.
It is a solar device.
A pergola isn't merely somewhere to put a table.
It is a climatic threshold.
A planted wall isn't simply green.
It modifies radiation, shade, humidity and habitat.
A water channel isn't necessarily an ornament.
It can belong to a larger irrigation and water-management system.
The garden becomes environmental infrastructure that happens to be beautiful.
7. ANCIENT ROME — The compluvium:
let the house harvest the rain
The Romans offer another remarkably simple idea: what if the roof itself became part of the water system?
In many Roman domus, the central atrium was partially open to the sky.
This opening was called the compluvium.
The surrounding roof surfaces sloped inward, directing rain towards the opening and into a shallow basin in the floor below: the impluvium.
The water could then pass into an underground cistern and be stored for domestic use.
The same opening also brought daylight and air into the heart of the house.
This arrangement is particularly well documented in the houses of Pompeii, where the Archaeological Park describes the atrium, compluvium, impluvium and underground cistern as parts of one integrated domestic system.
So one architectural gesture could perform several functions:
collect rainwater + bring daylight inside + open the centre of the house to the sky.
Again, the intelligence lies less in the form than in the integration.
Where can we still see it?
Pompeii, Italy is probably the clearest place to understand the principle today.
Roman houses throughout the archaeological city preserve atria and impluvia, while reconstructions and archaeological evidence allow us to understand how the roofs once directed rain inward.
Another beautiful example survives at Villa A at Oplontis, near Pompeii, where the atrium contains both the roof opening — the compluvium — and the corresponding impluvium used to collect rainwater.
This makes the Roman house particularly interesting for contemporary design because water collection wasn't necessarily an engineering system hidden somewhere behind the architecture.
It could be part of the architecture itself.
What if we put all of them into ONE house?
And this, for me, is where the project becomes really exciting.
Imagine a contemporary Mediterranean house — perhaps somewhere between Liguria and Provence.
It looks entirely contemporary with ancient technology.
Underneath its appearance lies thousands of years of accumulated climatic intelligence.
THE SITE
Before drawing the building, we map:
sun + wind + topography + existing trees + water + soil.
THE WATER — inspired by the qanat
Rainwater is collected, stored and redistributed by gravity wherever possible.
The landscape slows water rather than evacuating it immediately.
THE EARTH — inspired by the stepwell
The natural slope creates a partially sunken summer courtyard rather than being completely excavated and flattened.
THE AIR — inspired by the badgir
Cooler air enters low.
Warm air can escape high.
The section of the house participates in ventilation.
THE LIGHT — inspired by the mashrabiya
A porous external skin filters excessive solar radiation before it reaches the glazing.
THE HEART — inspired by the Mediterranean and Islamic patio
A small planted courtyard creates shade, light, vegetation and an intermediate microclimate at the centre of the house.
THE GARDEN — inspired by Persian gardens
Trees, water and vegetation are positioned according to climatic function as well as beauty.
And only after all of these passive strategies have been designed do the architect and engineers calculate the remaining mechanical heating and cooling requirements.
That's the reversal I find so interesting.
We currently tend to design the object first
and correct its climate afterwards.
What if we designed its climate first?
This is not about going backwards
There is an important distinction here.
Ancient doesn't automatically mean sustainable.
And vernacular solutions cannot simply be copied from one climate to another.
A technique developed for the dry heat of Yazd will not behave identically on a humid Ligurian coast.
Water-based evaporative cooling is highly climate-dependent.
Underground spaces require contemporary understanding of waterproofing, drainage, radon, ventilation and structural engineering.
Natural ventilation must be modelled according
to actual wind conditions.
And our contemporary expectations of comfort are different.
So this is not an argument against engineering.
It is an argument for bringing engineering in earlier — together with architecture and landscape.
We can take ancient empirical intelligence and test it with contemporary science.
That combination seems far more interesting to me than choosing between past and future.
Perhaps innovation is remembering intelligently
I increasingly wonder whether we have defined technological progress too narrowly.
We often assume that innovation means adding something.
Another machine.
Another sensor.
Another system.
Another layer of technology.
But sometimes innovation might mean discovering that the wall, the tree, the earth, the water and the wind can already perform part of the work.
The historic city of Yazd is particularly striking in this respect. UNESCO explicitly describes its traditional interaction between qanats, earthen construction, sunken courtyards and climatic adaptation as a potential inspiration for contemporary architecture facing sustainability challenges.
Perhaps our job isn't to copy the old forms.
It is to recover the intelligence behind them.
And then ask:
How would we design them today, knowing everything we know now?
Because the most modern house may not be the one with the most technology.
It may be the one that understands when technology isn't needed at all.
Perhaps what we are really returning to is a kind of common-sense simplicity.
Not simplicity as a rejection of progress, but simplicity as intelligence: observing before building, using shade before cooling, capturing water before draining it away, working with gravity instead of constantly pumping against it, planting a tree before installing another machine.
For centuries, many of these decisions were simply practical responses to local conditions.
Today, we have the opportunity to combine that common sense with contemporary science, engineering and technology.
Perhaps progress does not always mean adding more.
Sometimes it means understanding what was already there — and designing with it.
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