How This Midcentury Modern House Harnesses the Sun

Stewart Hicks
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2022–2023
YouTube
2.3M views · 4 years ago · explainer · evergreen

Stewart Hicks looks at a midcentury modern house, which commenters identify as the Schweikher House from the 1930s, and how its design handles the sun. It explains how the building's form works with sunlight and heat.

HN people share it as a clear example of passive solar design and of deliberate thermal design arriving with midcentury houses.

“Good, explicit thermal design appeared with mid-century houses.”
Architecture
#passivesolar#midcenturymodern#housedesign#stewarthicks#thermaldesign

3 comments from Hacker News

z
@zoltar2023 · in “Zero energy ready homes are coming”
Regarding passive solar, I liked this video on the Schweikher House built during the 1930s: ▶ this video
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d
@downboots2022 · in “House Design Harnesses the Sun”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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9
@908B64B1972023 · in “No A/C? No problem, if buildings copy networked tunnels of termite mounds”
> The house was built in 1870, before ACs. I suspect the original residents had techniques for keeping it cool I think it's tempting to ascribe some lost ancestral knowledge to older house, but to be completely honnest a lot of them weren't designed with thermal considerations in mind (or rather, the thermal efficiency was accidently achieved by following some heuristics). A lot of these older houses were simply badly insulated. They required a lot of wood or coal to keep warm during the winter or had the occupants wearing layers inside at all times but would cool down quite fast in the summer during the night, only to heat up again during the day. Good, explicit thermal design appeared with mid-century houses. [0] [0] ▶ this video
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