The hot weather we've been experiencing has reminded me of a tourist experience the other DrC and I had in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), where it is almost always hot and humid. One landmark there is the former South Vietnamese presidential palace, now a museum of the war that ended the separation of North and South Vietnam.
As a museum it is decent, what is really spectacular is its architecture. The building stays cool inside without being tightly enclosed or air conditioned. Its location in a parklike setting with mature trees doesn't hurt, but it is tall enough to stand head and shoulders above the trees and it simply isn't hot. The grounds outside were hot and muggy, the building was not, and it wasn't air conditioned, it didn't even have a lot of fans.
I don't know who gets the design credit. Probably a French architect or civil engineer. Somebody did an amazing job of tropical design.
If the western United States is going to live with blistering summers for the foreseeable future, the secrets of that building should be ferreted out and applied to new construction here in the west and across the south. We'd save a lot of money, need less electricity, and be much more comfortable.
Later … I was wrong, the prize winning architect was Ngô Viết Thụ, obviously a Vietnamese and a master of tropical design.
