Comment by ahh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ahh | Hacker News Reader

They said that no direct sunlight must fall on the external walls at all and the north façade [direction of summer sun] window-to-wall area must not exceed 25%.

Pass. Natural light (and tons of it!) are a hard requirement for anywhere I actually want to work. (Besides light and airy spaces being generally pleasant, I have mild SAD.)

In any case, I'd rather use modern air conditioning, which is stunningly efficient. It also actually produces temperatures I can live in. They don't quote actual interior temperatures (or humidities!) but I'll bet their "acceptable" is 78F+. Anything north of 70 and I am a sweaty mess. (If you're cold, put on a sweater; I can't exactly strip in the office and you wouldn't want to sit next to me anyway!)

Complaints about air conditioning are mostly a form of modern self-flagellation. If you're not suffering, you're not doing enough for Gaia. Cost/benefit calculations simply don't enter into it (if they did, someone might point out that eliminating all cooling whatsoever would not even move the needle on US energy. Consider https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/13/1526860... and https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=1174&t=1, from which you can see that cooling is 9% of electricity, which is perhaps 38% of total energy usage.)

> Complaints about air conditioning are mostly a form of modern self-flagellation.

For your, and HN's consideration, we are losing regional vernacular architecture because of air conditioning. One of my fav episode of 99% Invisible makes this case, that once architects outsourced the solving of thermal problem to air conditioning, they could build boxes of steel and glass anywhere. It's contrarian to Wright-ish principle of building with the land ("buildings should not be on a hill but of it"). I recall there's a part about how people would rather open a window for cooling and get moving air, instead of being inside a confined air conditioned space. The episode also visits a "baoli" of India and the modern building designed with its features.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/thermal-delight/

Honestly? Good.

Architects and architectural styles are much more concerned with their particular artistic vision, and status signaling within their tribe, than with whether their buildings are pleasant to live within. (See: brutalism, for the worst case, but this applies widely.)

The more practical realities force architects to abandon their pet styles and build efficient places, the better. I have to live there; they don’t.

Direct sunlight near equator would be a hard no for anywhere you want to work. Much rather have large/deep overhangs as this building has and most house designs integrate so you have indirect sunlight for most of the day. It will still be very very bright inside with ambient light refracted inward

Sunlight still gets inside, it's just not built like a greenhouse. Search for photos of the interior of the building... it looks lovely.

One big benefit that the article mentions is that you get a constant supply of fresh air, vs the recycled air that is typical in air conditioned buildings.

So any office you work in must be kept at 70F or below for your comfort, and your colleagues must wear sweaters?

Could there be a heath and fitness change you could make so the rest of the world wouldn’t have to suffer in cold offices? Working perpetually cold is miserable, and extra layers is only a partial solution.

Also, no matter how efficient modern air conditioning is relative to older systems, it’s still a financial expense that should be measured and minimized where possible.

I'm in the same boat as the person you're replying to. I have a really hard time in temperatures above 23-25C (sometimes slightly higher if it's really dry) and I really wouldn't want to work in such an environment. I sweat extremely easily in the heat, even idle, which is deeply uncomfortable.

I'm noting how incredibly rude your reply is; implying that there's a fitness issue causing the condition (at least in my case, there is not), and implying that GP wants to impose "their rule" on people who won't like it.

I work at home, FWIW, and my girlfriend doesn't like heat either. It's a good arrangement. You didn't get the chance to make assumptions about me, but please don't make assumptions about GP either.

If it's 70F indoors and you need to wear sweaters to keep from shivering, you might have a health & fitness problem just as much as the opposite case.

If anything north of 70F is too hot for you, you have a medical condition which should not be solved at the building scale.

There's a lot of ways to get natural light into a building without having direct exposure to sunlight.

An example would be Masdar City:

https://www.archdaily.com/517456/inside-masdar-city/539b46a2...

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