Research
6 min
Measured across a Tashkent summer, the hovli outperforms the systems we replaced it with.
VOLUM
We instrumented a nineteenth-century hovli in Tashkent through a full summer and compared it against a mid-century apartment two streets away. At the August peak the courtyard house held an internal temperature 8.7°C below the street, with no mechanical cooling of any kind.
The mechanism is unremarkable: shallow water, deep shade, high thermal mass, and a plan that moves air without a fan. What is remarkable is how completely it was abandoned.
