Wind Catcher: A Lost Architectural Heritage with Timeless Passive Attributes

Abstract

Wind Catcher is prominently known as a passive cooling device in buildings, especially in hot humid, and hot dry regions. In metropolitan cities of Pakistan, the wind catcher is seen as a lost heritage of the past. Campaigns to revive the wind catcher as a cooling and air displacement device are surfacing amongst the global communities. The chapter aims to address the social paradigm of wind catchers in the past and present and discusses its prospects for the highly polluted cities of Lahore and Karachi with a focus on the landscape. Using digital ethnography, the responses toward wind catchers in non-residential buildings were observed via blogs and videos. A total of 1386 nodes were coded from 54 sources in Nvivo for thematic classification based on a deductive approach of Past, Present, and Future. The chapter suggests the implication of wind catcher revival in the buildings of Lahore and Karachi as an effective wind ventilation solution for indoor air pollution, infiltration, thermal comfort, and cultural identity.