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How Tropical Kings Kept Cool Before Air Conditioning
Ingenious design choices aimed at beating the heat
Modern readers would be aghast at any suggestion to try and live without air conditioning — especially people who live in tropical climates. I live in Florida, and the idea has crossed my mind that it would be preferable to live without air conditioning. Air conditioning is expensive, and it uses a ton of energy. Despite my lofty ideas, it is unfeasible to try and live without the modern convenience of AC. Houses today just aren’t built with natural heat transfer in mind. In fact, modern houses are all designed with AC specifically in mind.
But people have lived in tropical climates since the beginning of time, and up until recently, air conditioning wasn’t widespread. (In some places, millions of people continue to live without air conditioning.) They managed and still manage without it. So how did they do it?
Tropical people of past eras used a number of different strategies to try and keep cool when the sun beat down the hardest. Tropical cities in places like India were designed specifically to try and beat the heat. Civil engineers used a combination of shade, water and natural heat transfer to keep areas cool even when the air was stifling. In many cases, these things were used in tandem to get the best results.
