Yeah, mold tends to be the default trade-off when you choose any method of cooling other than AC.
As someone who is allergic to mold, I'd choose an air-conditioned glass-and-steel box any day over a moldy mud hut if they were equally cool. But I do wonder if, given better technology, we could come up with buildings and cities that have the best of both worlds.
Maybe we should look to ancient building materials and methods for new ideas. The Seokguram grotto in Korea, for example, had been dry for over a thousand years until modern "restoration" projects messed up the delicate balance of air and water. Now there are dehumidifiers running 24/7 to keep mold out of the grotto. It's really pathetic. If pre-modern Indian mud huts can reduce the temperature by 10 degrees without electricity, why can't modern science come up with structures that reduce the humidity by 30 percent, for instance?
Beyond energy use, allergies seem also to be a by-product of growing up sanitised & sealed glass-and-steel boxes. Not that it helps people like you and me who already have them, but in the long-run saner construction might help avoid even that.
Yes, I agree that the long-term solution lies somewhere in the middle. Certainly it would be unwise for mass-adoption of mud buildings (not least because they're a LOT of work to maintain), but if architects and builders would become more open to mixing and exploring with traditional techniques and materials (which, lets face it, has been honed over a long period to deal with humidity, heat and uncomfortable climate before electricity) we could probably get much more comfortable and energy efficient buildings and also cities.
An acquaintance of mine, Laurent, works on this in eastern India [1].
Yeah, mold tends to be the default trade-off when you choose any method of cooling other than AC.
As someone who is allergic to mold, I'd choose an air-conditioned glass-and-steel box any day over a moldy mud hut if they were equally cool. But I do wonder if, given better technology, we could come up with buildings and cities that have the best of both worlds.
Maybe we should look to ancient building materials and methods for new ideas. The Seokguram grotto in Korea, for example, had been dry for over a thousand years until modern "restoration" projects messed up the delicate balance of air and water. Now there are dehumidifiers running 24/7 to keep mold out of the grotto. It's really pathetic. If pre-modern Indian mud huts can reduce the temperature by 10 degrees without electricity, why can't modern science come up with structures that reduce the humidity by 30 percent, for instance?