How This Midcentury Modern House Harnesses the Sun

This one took me back to my undergrad days doing net-zero design. I think it's really fascinating how many residential projects these days try to brute force green design practices with panels and finishes while almost completely ignoring site and orientation when those factors are so powerful in this conversation.

The complete opposite approach from where I am. I work as an architect in Thailand which is very hot and high humidity in all seasons. The approach we go for is limited to blocking out the heat and extra ventilation flow. Facing our opening at north side and solid wall at the south. Lifting our floor to stay away from the ground to create air barrier for humidity when floor start release heat in the evening.

Some smart peron once said that a smart building isn't necessarily one with lots of electronics etc, but a smart layout from the beginning, so you don't need the fancy stuff in the first place. This building is a great example for this approach.

My parents actually did something similar when designing their home. The Balcony railing on the south side is intentionally build to allow climbing plants to use it. In the sommer, these plants grow leaves that throw shade on the windows below, while in Winter all the leaves are gone and the Sun can easily heat up the House. This seriously saves quite some energy.

The piano cover of "House of the Rising Sun" in the beginning was a nice touch. This video is so fascinating, I always thought it was interesting to find clever ways to keep houses heated/cooled without ever needing a typical hvac system.

My grandfather’s house had a cool trick for keeping food fresh, built back before refrigerators. There was a vertically oriented cabinet built into the Kitchen cabinetry. When you opened it, the shelves were all wooden grids. Stick your head in and you saw that the top and bottom of the cabinet were open; on the bottom, into the basement/crawl space of the house, on the top into the attic space, where there was a large Venturi vent to allow hot air accumulating in the attic to escape. When you stuck your hand into the cabinet, you could always feel a gentle breeze blowing up, pulling cool air from the crawl space up into the attic. So, say you wanted to keep a head of lettuce or something like that fresher for longer, and your literal icebox simply did not have the room, and anyway was too cold. You cut the head of lettuce in half and placed each half on a plate and put it in the cabinet, then you poured a little water into the plate and covered it with a cloth. The water would wick up into the cloth, and the constant breeze blowing in the closed cabinet would cause the water in the cloth to evaporate, dropping the temperature inside the cloth by 15 or 20 degree. My grandfather told me all the houses built back when his were built had such cabinets, but most people in the 1960s didn’t know what they were for and so they closed off the top and bottom and put in normal shelving. In the 1960’s he still used his to make produce last longer.

Architecture shaped by functionality; a timeless design principle. This is the good stuff.

More vids like this please! I grew up in a passive solar heated house and can’t understand why there aren’t more new buildings that implement passive heating and cooling.

I keep waiting for the phase change solar mass to hit the market. I saw something on it a few years back. It used sealed wax beads in the dry wall. The wax was formulated to go through a phase change at a specific temperature (near room temperature). That let it absorb a huge amount of energy whenever the room was above that temperature and then radiate it back when the temperature dropped. It took up much less space than traditional thermal mass and by adjusting the mix when making wax you could adjust the temperature the wall tried to keep the room at.

Our house has some of these designs, including a foot of concrete underneath the section of floor receiving winter sun. On sunny winter days, the temperature in these rooms is always 2-5 degrees above the thermostat set point. So nice! At night we have shoji screens to pull across the glass, which helps with thermal retention.

These ideas were used by German farmers living along the Volga River in the Kanton of Frank in the 1800's. Their homes were dug about 4 feet below grade level. So you stepped down about four steps into the house. The walls were made of a mixture of mud and straw with no north facing windows. The south facing windows did not allow indirect summer sun. In the winter the sun reached about 20 feet into the rooms. A thermal mass Russian style stove kept the houses comfortable in the winter, using very little fuel. A few of theses homes were built on farms in Nebraska in the l1890's. They were said to be very warm in the winter and cool in the summer heat.

I was incredibly privileged in the mid 1990s to receive a private tour of the Schweickher house. What a exceptional environment to live in. I was impressed on how the use of wood on the interior carried over to the shower, which was lined with cypress, I believe. Thank you for showcasing this beautiful home and its history.

I’ve heard of the solar home concept from Frank Lloyd Wright’s “solar hemicycle” Jacobs II house. It’s so interesting to see how other architects employed the concept in their own way!

Your videos have made me realise just how much 'mid century modern' style was developed wayyy before the 50s.

This method is used in cob houses. In studying them I read the winter sun at noon is the same angle as summer moon at midnight and vice versa. This was a way to get sight lines in order for opposing seasons though they are 6 months away. In addition to that, they would build just to the east of deciduous trees to get additional shading in the summer and sun in the winter. Natural shading is a huge cooling factor in the summer.

Not sure if you have seen or heard of the Cold Climate Housing Reaserch Center (CCHRC) in Fairbanks, Alaska, but they have done a lot of research and experimentation with homes and buildings using passive solar to provide a more comfortable and affordable living space for people in the Arctic. They have a YouTube channel with videos that go in to some detail on these homes. You may also be interested in their office building which was built not only as a work space but also a testbed for some for the technologies and building techniques that have been pioneered by their work over the last 20 or so years. This video reminded me of some of their work regarding optimizing roof overhangs to allow 3 seasons of sunlight into a space and shade out the hot and constant summer sun. Keep up the good work!

All of these principles are so basic to good building, but so often ignored these days. It seems like many architects and their clients think that modern HVAC systems can make a space comfortable using brute force. Not only is this incredibly wasteful and expensive; it often doesn't work. As an example, a friend of mine worked in a tall office building in the Long Island City section of Queens built in the late 1980s. The building was sheathed entirely in glass, with architect-designed mylar shades in the south and west-facing spaces. Despite this, these spaces were impossible to work in even in the winter because of the heat gain. No amount of air conditioning could mitigate the problem. Those spaces are now used mainly as storage and utility rooms, or left empty. The Schweikher House has very much the same vibe as many of Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian houses. I wonder if they influenced each other.

I grew up in a mid 19th century farm house (c. 1850), the porch on the South facing façade was acting like the hang over part of the video. The sun would shine in on winter and not shine in at all on summer. Although, all the rest of the heat distribution mechanics were absent, it still helped a lot to keep the temperature even.

Glad you were able to visit Stewart. This has been one of my favorite houses for decades. In fact, I had my architectural studio on the property for over for over 20 years. I was the building architect and assisted with all its restoration during that time. Curiously, your comments about the house are almost verbatim from the tour I developed and gave to hundreds of people. I can only guess that it was offer to you by the current staff. I really hope you enjoyed seeing it. Wish your could have come while Martyl still lived there. You would have noticed a distinct difference. Keep up the good work. Love your videos. Cheers.

In the 60’s this was simply called good design. This was just another consideration to be addressed by the architect during the design process.