Desert Architecture -a link

[The Irish One]

I'm always interested in finding innovative techniques to deal with BAKING HOT desert heat. It's all idealism here in San Diego county, but maybe, maybe some day a rich developer will construct some different architecture for houses, shopping centers, learning centers, etc.. for a desert in the USA. Anyway this is a very cool link with nice technical details. Enjoy http://www.bgu.ac.il/CDAUP/

 

[BKM]

As much as I don't like the idea of Phoenix, there is a school of architecture developing in Phoenix that, while very modernist, tries to recognize the desert aesthetic. Will Bruder and a gentleman named Joy are two of the architects whose works I've seen published.

 

[Chet]

You mean there's somehting more to desert architecture than faux - adobe with faux-wood jutting out from it?

 

[SkeLeton]

While I doubt there is anything better to build in the desert, than adobe, the main problem is finding a method to cool down the atmosfere inside the building, be it building it with adequate ventilation, materials that don't attract or keep the heat, or have some system for using water to cool the roof, hence cooling the air below the roof (specially if the roof is made of impermeable cloth or glass), but in a desert the water would tend to heat up, so there would need some kind of refrigerating system to cool the water down

It's quite hard to find a easy and reasonable way to build in the desert....

 

[Cardinal]

Radical thought of the day: Why build in the desert?

OK, some building is necessary, but when we have to engineer such massive and mind-boggling systems as we have already done, just to support human life, is it really worth the effort? I'm thinking sustainability here.

There is enough water in the desert to support a limited population. We have constructed an enormous system of water storage and delivery to expand that number, but it is becoming very apparent that even that is not enough. At the time it was constructed there was no thought to the environmental damage it would cause and we are just beginning to understand some of it. It goes beyond harming the environment to threatening the resource itself. Lake Powell contains concentrations of selenium (leached from the native rock) that pregnant women and children are advised not to swim in it. This is the drinking water of Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc.

I am all for architectural design to mitigate the extremes of a desert environment. I only question if we should be there in the first place.

 

[SkeLeton]

building in the desert is just like building soaring skyscrapers... humans like to push the limit...

There are 6,2 billion human beings on earth... We gotta put them somewhere...though not in the amazonian desert, since destroying that... would be destroying the habitability of the earth, or at least a very marked climatical change.

 

[The Irish One]

Why build in the desert?

If you build it they will come.
flying from san diego to pheonix you can see just how dry and inhospitable a place the dessert is -yet there are green patches of agriculture, -ground water??. On approach to pheonix you see all of the neighborhoods to come -the vegetation is scraped off the flat ground.

seems like the only way to get cool in the dessert without using a ton of ac and water is to build in to the ground.