A patio in Cordoba, Spain, on May 15, 2021, during the Patios Cordouans festival (AFP / Cristina Quicler)
Flower pergolas in Provence, Spanish shaded patios, Amerindian carbets … These traditional structures are very useful to protect themselves from the sun and bring a little freshness, and are increasingly interested in architects looking for solutions to global warming.
“There are really a lot of very interesting examples” from the past to make the habitat more comfortable in case of strong heat, estimates Cristiana Mazzoni, architect and urban planner.
Professor at the National School of Architecture in Paris-Belleville (ENSAPB), she studied architecture along the old silk roads, which cross the Asian continent from China to the Mediterranean basin, and particularly the “houses in court, patio or loggia”.
The interior court of the Al-Naasan palace in the old town of Damas
In an interior courtyard, “it is the shadow and the vegetation that bring freshness and as it is built in the thickness of the building”, the sun’s rays do not directly heat the walls. “Often, there is a fountain or a well that brings water back from the depths, which brings even more freshness,” explains Cristiana Mazzoni.
These interior courses are characteristic of Moroccan riads, Roman houses (Domus), Venetian palaces, or Ottoman residences with covered central hall.
“Continuing on the silk roads, there are wind towers”, the ecological ancestors of air conditioning, numerous in Iran, which refresh the accommodation with a natural ventilation system. As well as “earth houses”, a very insulating material, which today inspire many architects, adds Cristiana Mazzoni.
A wind tower in Yazd, Iran, July 3, 2023 (AFP / Atta Kenare)
Another very widespread example, the traditional Provencal house is designed to protect itself from the wind and the sun with in particular the installation of a southern side trellis.
– “Renewal of thought” –
“We enter an era when we risk giving great importance to hyper technology”, at the risk of “moving away from the human”, underlines Cristiana Mazzoni, who will organize in September a conference to bring the architects around all these examples of vernacular architecture.
A woman rests in the interior courtyard of a large house built in clay, on February 9, 2005 in Djenné, in central Mali (AFP / Francois Xavier Marit)
“We were building with the materials available and according to climates and ways of living,” recalls Jacques Boulnois, architect in BHPR and teacher at the University of Orleans.
Returning to ancestral know-how constitutes “a renewal of thought”, with the consideration that “we can no longer do everything” in front of the climate and that “a new contemporary architecture must be found”, he believes. “Without fuel oil or electricity, it was not easy for our ancestors, but they put intelligence,” said Jacques Boulnois.
Examples of modern reuse exist, like rue de Meaux, in the north of Paris, where the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano, co-creator of the Center Pompidou, designed in 1991 a large interior courtyard in the middle of the social housing he also drawn.
“You will notice the small difference of two degrees between the street and the courtyard” planted with birch and goatfeuilles, notes Colette, a long -standing resident of the residence.
Exposed south, she does not directly feel the benefits of the freshness of the courtyard on her accommodation, just like Ilan, 35, who nevertheless emphasizes that he does “never make stifling heat as (he) lived before, a 19th century building”.
Still in Paris, in the Chapel district, the French architect Françoise-Hélène Jourda rehabilitated in 2014 the pajol hall, dating from the beginning of the 20th century, integrating a rainwater recovery system, solar panels and a Canadian well (also called Provençal well) which uses the temperature of the soil to ventilate a house with more hot or cooler air.
“No miracle solution” however, warns Jacques Boulnois, for whom we will have to think about “making contemporary” this knowledge, not necessarily adapted to all regions. In the case of Iranian wind towers for example, “natural ventilation” by air currents is “extremely complicated” to understand and exploit according to the places.
