Ancient Sustainable Architecture

During my visit to Iran, I came across these structures, I was curious to know what they were because I saw them in many parts of the Country, almost every city. I was briefed that this is the ancient water storage and refrigerating system. In the ancient times these mud-brick structures were made with domes and chimneys shaped.

The domes served as underground water reservoir designed to store drinking water in arid regions. The dome helped minimize surface area exposure to the sun and reducing water evaporation and the chimneys helped capture and circulate breeze down into the reservoir to keep the water cool. It is a zero-energyy system, and also designed in the most natural way, and they are still sustaining even after centuries so one can imagine these are not weak structures that will last for a few years only. The new age water tank needs so much of maintenance, and they are not so robust also. We may find these still even after another 200 years and it is possible that the water tanks we are building now may be broken.

Through simple physical laws like convection and evaporative cooling, these ancient reservoirs provided communities with clean, chilled water through the harshest seasons. I wish we can implement more of sustainable practices from these olden themes. We need it all the more now.

Thank you for visiting my blog. 👼🏻👼🏻💖💖🌹🌺🌸