Heat as a building material

We still draw buildings as if air were free and shade were decoration. In London last July the pavement at 16:00 was 61 C. That is not a weather anecdote. It is a specification failure.

At Meridian we have started writing heat into the door schedule. Every opening gets a surface temperature at 15:00 in August, a night flush rate, and a glare note. Clients find this irritating until the first summer they do not buy a portable air conditioner.

The lesson from Wind House was not that rammed earth is virtuous. It was that a house can be tuned like an instrument if you accept that comfort is a seasonal practice, not a setpoint.

What we refuse is the glass box with a mechanical apology attached. Heat is a material. Treat it with the same seriousness you give to a stone lintel, or stop calling the work architecture.