A skyscraper breathes

It’s high, it’s green and it’s full of holes: in the middle of the mega-city Bangkok stands a high-rise building that is extremely well adapted to the tropical climate – and without air conditioning! For its unusual architecture, the residential high-rise “The Met” has now received the International Highrise Award.

Thailand’s capital Bangkok has a tropical climate, the air is hot and humid all year round. Especially in March and April, it gets almost unbearably stuffy and humid in the metropolis. Those who can afford it live with air conditioning. Until now. Because last year, a high-rise building was built in the middle of the city that has pleasant temperatures without air conditioning: “The Met” is the name of the 230-metre-high structure that has now received the Frankfurt High-Rise Award.

Yet the building is neither particularly beautiful nor particularly high. But it is airy: six tower buildings stand offset to each other and are connected by terraces. The resulting open spaces let in a lot of light and air. Almost all 370 flats have windows on each side. Planted balconies and terraces additionally provide a good living climate and a friendly atmosphere.

The idea and execution of “The Met” were worthy of the jury’s first prize. The high-rise building was designed so openly “that it literally breathes in the middle of a mega-city”, the jury said in its statement. Yesterday afternoon, the winners – a Singaporean architectural firm – were honoured in Frankfurt’s Paulskirche. Co-owner Wong Mun Summ accepted the 50,000 euro prize at a ceremony.

The Black Forest House

Whether it’s a high-rise in Bangkok or an igloo in Greenland: how and from which material a house is built depends above all on the climate. This is no different in the Black Forest. The original Black Forest houses are adapted to the harsh climate of the low mountain range. They achieve this primarily through a special roof shape, the so-called cripple hip roof. It is pulled down low on the sides so that it provides a lot of shade in summer. Only in winter, when the sun is lower, can its rays warm the walls of the house. The gables of the house are protected by a small canopy: This gives the wind less surface to attack.

Nevertheless, it became uncomfortable in the houses during the cold season. Heating was then provided by a wood-burning stove. Fired from the kitchen, it also warmed the living rooms and bedrooms via sliding flaps. Wood was constantly growing in the surrounding area. And the Black Forest people were well protected against wind and weather in their houses.

What are climate zones?

In the morning cloudy to partly cloudy with showers. In the afternoon the sun will shine, with temperatures between 16 and 22 degrees”, this may be the weather forecast for southern Germany. The forecast is interesting for us because the weather is constantly changing. It is different with the climate, because that remains. Climate means the average weather of a region over a longer period of time. For example, the climate at the equator is hot and humid all year round. At the North Pole, on the other hand, temperatures are freezing and there is little precipitation. Between the equator and the poles, there are areas where it can be very changeable, just like here. But why is it that the climate on Earth is so different?

The sun’s radiation is not equally strong everywhere on earth. How intensively it heats the earth depends on the angle of the sun’s radiation and thus on the latitude. Because the sun is almost vertical all year round near the equator, the earth is heated very strongly here. Towards the poles, the sun’s rays strike at an increasingly shallow angle: The same solar energy is distributed over an ever larger area. Therefore, the greater the distance to the equator, the cooler it becomes. This creates regions with different climates, the climate zones

According to the strength of the sun’s rays, four different climate zones can be divided on the mainland of the earth: The tropics around the equator, the subtropics (from the Latin word “sub” for “under”) between the 23rd and 40th degrees of latitude, the temperate zone of our latitudes and the polar regions around the North and South Poles. Like belts, these climate zones run around the earth in an east-west direction.

However, the climate does not only depend on the latitude, other influences also play a role. For example, there is snow on Mount Kilimanjaro even though it is in the tropics. The fact that its summit is icy is due to the fact that the temperature drops with increasing altitude. Mountain climates are therefore always cooler than lower-lying areas.

The distance to the sea also affects the climate: Water can store solar heat longer than land. It also warms up more slowly than the land. As a result, seawater acts as a buffer for temperatures. The climate is therefore mild near the coast. Inland, this heat balance is missing and the climate is continental, with temperatures fluctuating much more than in the maritime climate near the sea.

Tropics

It is hot and humid like in a greenhouse. Around noon there are heavy downpours, the heat makes the humidity evaporate and hangs heavy in the air. No wonder the humidity is almost always above 70 percent. Trees and plants proliferate in this climate over several storeys up into the sky. Such tropical rainforests can still be found on the Amazon, in the Congo or in Southeast Asia. But the rainforests only make up part of the tropics. There is much more to this climate zone!

The tropics form a broad belt on both sides of the equator and are bounded by the tropics at about 23 degrees north and south latitude. A typical feature of the tropics is that temperatures fluctuate more in the course of a day than in the course of a year. Because the position of the sun is almost uniformly high throughout the year, there are no seasons like there are here. The length of the days also varies only slightly over the year, between 10 and 13 hours.

There are different vegetation zones in the tropics. Near the equator are the ever-humid tropics with their daily downpours and a lush tropical rainforest. Towards the tropics, it becomes drier and drier. In this region between rainforest and desert lie vast grasslands: the savannas. Depending on the amount of rain, trees still thrive or, with increasing dryness, only isolated shrubs and thorn bushes. These savannas are particularly widespread in Africa.

A particularly well-known savannah is the Serengeti in Tanzania and Kenya. Besides the typical savannah plants, impressive animal species live here. Herbivores like giraffe, zebra and elephant or the big cats cheetah and lion are at home in the Serengeti.

Temperate zone

Freezing cold or scorching heat are rare here. Extreme temperatures are rarely measured in the temperate zone. Precipitation falls all year round: in summer as rain or hail, in the cold season sometimes as snow. Germany is also located in these temperate latitudes, which lie between the subtropics and the polar regions.

In the northern hemisphere, western and central Europe are part of the temperate latitudes, as well as the central part of North America and central Asia. This climate zone covers a much smaller area in the southern hemisphere: New Zealand, south-eastern Australia, southern Africa and South America are part of it. More than a third of the world’s population lives in the temperate latitudes, especially the highly developed industrial nations such as the USA, Japan, China and many European countries.

Spring, summer, autumn and winter – distinct seasons are a special feature of the temperate zone. Because temperatures change with the rhythm of the seasons, vegetation has adapted. To survive the frost in winter, deciduous trees shed their leaves in autumn and form new ones in spring. Conifers are particularly well protected against severe cold by the wax layer of their needles. Deciduous and mixed forests are the typical vegetation in temperate latitudes.

Typical for the temperate zone is: the further inland you go, the drier it gets. While it rains a lot all year round in Brest, France, on the Atlantic Ocean, it is much drier in Siberia, far inland on the continent. There, the temperature differences between summer and winter are also much higher. Such a dry climate with strong temperature fluctuations is called a continental climate. Because of the great aridity, hardly any forest grows here. In contrast, there are more steppes – also called prairies (North America) or pampas (South America), depending on the region. In some places it is so dry that semi-deserts and deserts have formed, such as the Gobi in Central Asia.

Thick air in mega-cities

Whether in Lagos, Tehran or Calcutta – in many cities and urban centres the population growth is enormous. Worldwide, there are currently already about 20 cities that have more than 10 million people, so-called mega-cities. Here, it is not only the number of inhabitants that is rising. With the growth, the environmental problems are also becoming more and more dramatic. Air pollution is particularly bad in the growing cities of Asia.

Millions of vehicles crowd through the streets, tons of exhaust fumes are blown into the air. Soot, heavy metals and toxic gases accumulate in the atmosphere. Pollutants from industrial plants, households and private waste incineration add to the burden. A thick haze regularly hangs over many metropolises such as Mexico City, Los Angeles or Beijing. This not only impairs clear visibility, it is also extremely harmful to health. Diseases of the respiratory tract, the skin, the cardiovascular system, the immune system and cancer can be the result. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), many Asian cities are particularly polluted by fine dust. One of them is Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. In this metropolitan region alone, an estimated 15,000 people die prematurely each year due to air pollution. Worldwide, the figure is around two million, according to the WHO.

Air quality could be improved if pollutant emissions were regulated and controlled by law. In Los Angeles and Mexico City, these measures are already showing success. The situation is more difficult in the fast-growing metropolises of developing countries. Here, it is mainly primitive cooking stoves that pollute the air. The thick smoke from wood and coal fires makes the respiratory tract ill. Millions of households are therefore to be equipped with clean cooking cookers by 2020.