#passive-cooling-design

Most widely-publicised ceramic cooler designs (bloc°, TerraCool) are studio or exhibition prototypes with no street deployment record. CoolAnt/Ant Studio is the exception. Terracotta durability, scaling, biofouling, pump upkeep, and multi-season public-realm performance remain un

Evaporative cooling cannot lower air below its wet-bulb temperature; the achievable drop equals the wet-bulb depression. In humid heat that gap is small, so the cooling nearly vanishes — confining ceramic coolers to hot-dry climates and weakening them where humid heatwaves bite.

Porous fired-terracotta modules, kept wet by solar-powered pumps and fans, cool passing air by evaporation — creating comfort pockets at bus stops, plazas and courtyards with no refrigerants and minimal energy. Effect is large in hot, dry air but collapses in humidity, and every

Reintroduce passive cooling from traditional hot-climate design — shaded streets, courtyards, underground air channels — and pair it with heat governance: naming and categorizing heatwaves so the public treats heat as seriously as storms.

In June 2022 Seville launched proMETEO Sevilla, the first system in the world to tie heat-wave forecasts to health outcomes and to name and categorize heat waves the way storms are named. A three-tier categorization wei…

In 2021 Miami-Dade County appointed Jane Gilbert as the world's first Chief Heat Officer — a dedicated municipal post to coordinate extreme-heat response across agencies that otherwise treat heat as no one's specific re…

After a 2010 heatwave killed 1,344 people, Ahmedabad built South Asia's first Heat Action Plan (2013) — a governance-led response combining color-coded early-warning red alerts pushed to residents, hospital "heat wards"…

Seville revived a roughly 3,000-year-old passive-cooling technique, channeling air through underground galleries (a qanat-style system) to pre-cool it before delivering it to buildings and public space. The city has lon…