Jali Screens: Geometry as Climate ControlPREVIEW

Monsoons drench India 6 months per year.
Vernacular architecture caught rainwater
in tanks and used it for cooling
(fountains, gardens) year-round. Modern
buildings ignore the monsoon and run air
conditioning 9 months.

Indian vernacular architecture integrated
monsoon harvesting into thermal
management. Courtyards and water tanks
filled during monsoon (June-September)
supplied water for fountains, irrigation,
and cooling through the heat season
(October-May). Water was the seasonal
cooling resource.

A Mughal garden complex in Delhi captured
roughly 500 millimetres of annual monsoon
rainfall across courtyard surfaces. For a
1-hectare garden, this is approximately 5
million litres of water. Stored in
underground tanks and cascading through
fountains, this water provided cooling
throughout the dry season. The cooling was
powered by gravity (fountains) and solar
radiation (evaporative cooling from water
surfaces).

Modern offices ignore this rhythm. Rain
drains to sewers. Cooling comes from
electricity 9 months per year. The
seasonal wisdom is forgotten.

Biothermal Microconditioning rediscovers
this through rainwater integration.
Thermopods can be connected to rainwater
cisterns. During monsoon (June-September),
cistern water keeps Terrapod soil
saturated. Areca palms, having abundant
water, transpire at maximum capacity. This
is the cooling season. In the post-monsoon
heat (October-May), cistern water is
depleted. Irrigation switches to grey
water from sinks or stored water. The
system adapts to seasonal water
availability.

Scale this across corporate campuses: a
100-hectare office park can harvest 50
million litres of monsoon water. Stored
properly, this water sustains 1,000
Thermopod units through the heat season
without competing with drinking water or
agricultural irrigation. Water scarcity is
inverted through seasonal abundance.
Sensible by nature.