FINDING HARMONY
IN NATURE
/ Dallas Felder / Cary D’Alo Place / Jonathan LaRocca
The heart of this design is three central
light wells that bring natural illumina-
tion to all the occupants and, more
significantly, help heat and cool the
structure. “Air-conditioning has made
architects lazy,” says Dallas Felder, a
Houston-based architect who learned
about solar chimneys and the stack
effect during his two years of work on
the King Abdullah University of Science
and Technology, in Thuwal, Saudi
Arabia. “It’s easy to put in plated glass
and crank up the cooling system. We
wanted to harness physics instead of
mechanics, to use natural phenomena
to move air around instead of machines.”
Felder, who worked on the project
with two of his former students from
Rice University, used the light wells to
draw air up through a series of chim-
neys, which emerge in a striking rooftop
silhouette. Passing through a swamp
cooler—in this case, a cascade of water
flowing on all four sides of the glassed-
in light wells—the chilled air is then
drawn through the building by a series
of manually operated windows. Interior
comfort is further enhanced by a closed-
loop chilled-beam system powered by
a rooftop solar array. The convection
flow can be reversed to provide heating
in winter. Felder stresses that this solu-
tion is site specific, determined by the
existing structure and surrounding
environment. “The swamp cooler works
well in a dry climate,” says Felder.
“But in Houston, for example, there’s
too much moisture in the air already.
You couldn’t use water to cool it.”
The proposal includes rooftop gardens and a running track for employees, with a dramatic backdrop of solar chimneys. ROOFTOP PUBLIC PLAZA CENTRAL LIGHT WELLS & SOLAR CHIMNEYS NATURAL VENTILATION & WATER COOLING EVAPORATIVE COOLER HOT AIR IS PULLED IN AND ESCAPES UN HEATS TOWER AND CREATES VACUUM CHILLED BEAMS CLOSED-LOOP WATER CIRCULATION COOL AIR LEF T BEHIND
A chilled-beam system uses natural heat exchange for additional cooling;
the convection system can be reversed to provide heat in winter.
Solar chimneys capture heat and create a
breeze, drawing air through a curtain of water
that flows on all sides of three central light
wells. According to the designers, this allows
the building to “flush its lungs of dust while
cooling the fresh air.”
