Self-Cooling Exterior Buildings : promenade building

Brooklyn-based design studio Modu created the Promenade building, which has an exterior that lowers the ambient air temperature to cool the entire structure. The studio adds pocket gardens, fluted walls made from concrete, trellises, and vertical fins to support the building. It will be a place to host wellness and health clients as it boasts a plethora of offices — each tenant gets its own interiors and exterior space.

Founding director of Modu, Phu Hoang tells Dezeen that, “Houston is a very hot climate with a lot of rain. So what we were trying to do is to think about how you can design for that climate and specifically, an idea of designing to lower the heat of the air that’s around the building. In hot climates like that, if you can lower the air temperature, then it would require less air conditioning because the air around the building is cooler.”

Image Credit: Modu, Leonid Furmansky, Naho Kubota