A good way of looking at this might be to read the work of my friend Ken Yeang. He has designed many buildings, often high rise, in tropical Malaysia. He has studied the traditional architectural forms that kept buildings cool before we had air con. The contrast between these and the often air conned buildings is very stark. One major thing that undoubtedly happened was that Northern European and USA styles of architecture were imported to hot climates and then massively airconned to overcome their flawed designs. It’s not a very happy tale but Ken Yeang’s story is wonderfully insightful.

I am from a tropical country and the buildings built in the 50s and 60s were all designed with cross ventilation, and climate protection, with brisesoleils, good orientation acording to the sun movements, with patios, covered corridors, terraces, but with the area of air conditioned, the tipology of buildings has change and now we have closed buildings with glass envelop. The new architects do not know How to design taking in consideration the shadows and the wind.

The study of these papers will be useful in your research.

• "Where's the air conditioning switch?": Identifying problems for sustaining local architectural traditions in the contemporary United Arab Emirates-

• Architectural Design of Big Lecture Hall in Relation to Air Conditioning System.

• Influence of surface boundary conditions on architectural indoor thermal environment with air conditioning.

• Air conditioning - its architectural, structural and client relationship.