Great article that contains great info on ancient Greek and Pueblo solar housing, here is some;
Solar oriented cities in Antiquity
Knowles' research draws on ancient
knowledge, most notably the solar planned cities in Ancient Greece and
the solar communities of the Ancient Pueblo People in what is today
the Southwestern United States. The Ancient Greeks built entire cities
which were optimal for solar exposure.
In
the fifth century BC, for example, a neighbourhood for about 2500
people was built in the city of Olynthus. The streets were built
perpendicular to each other, running long in the east-west direction
(the horizontal streets shown in the plan), so that all houses (five
on each side of the street) could be built with southern exposure.
A gridirion street plan oriented at the
cardinal points was not new at the time, and neither is it proof of a
design aimed at maximum solar exposure. But the Greeks did more. In "A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology", Ken Butti and John Perlin note that all houses were consistently built around a south-facing courtyard:
"The houses that
faced south on the street and south to the sun were entered through
the court, straight from the street. The houses that faced north to
the street and south to the sun were entered through a passageway that
led from the street through the main body of the house and into the
court, from which access was gained to all other spaces."
In
keeping with the democratic ethos of the period, the height of
buildings was strictly limited so that each courtyard received an equal
amount of sunshine:
"In winter, rays
from the sun traveling low across the southern sky streamed across
the south-facing courts, throgh the portico, and into the house -
heating the main rooms. The north walls were made of adobe bricks one
and a half feet thick, which kept out the cold north winds of
winter."
Another obvious example of Ancient Greek
solar planning was Priene (illustration above), rebuilt in 350 BC
and located in present-day Turkey. The city had about 4000
inhabitants living in 400 houses. Its buildings and street plan were
similar to those in Olynthus, but because the city was built on
the slope of a steep mountain, many of the fifteen secondary
streets (running north-south) were actually stairways. The seven
main avenues were terraced on an east-west axis.
Native Americans
The Ancient Pueblo People or "Anasazi"
built a number of sophisticated solar oriented communities during the
11th and 12th centuries AD in what is now the Southwestern United
States: Long House at Mesa Verde, Pueblo Bonito in Northern Mexico and
the "sky city" of Acoma.
Illustration of Acoma Pueblo, by Gary S. Shigemura (from "Energy and Form", Ralph Knowles).
These communities followed a different
building style than that of the Greeks. The Ancient Pueblo People
constructed terraced buildings of up to three floors high. These were
buildings that would fit perfectly in a solar envelope with slanting
lines. Acoma pueblo (illustration above) is one example of these
orderly, solar planned communities. It consists of three rows of
houses built along streets running east and west, so that each
building faces south. The streets that separate the houses have a
width that allows winter shadows to cover the whole of the adjoining
street, stopping just before the following row of buildings.
Heliodon
Knowles' research combines the best
elements of these historical designs and incorporates modern technology
that greatly facilitates the generation of a solar envelope. The heliodon,
invented in the 1930s, is a contraption that creates a geometrical
relationship between an architectural scale model and (a
representation of) the sun. More recently, software versions of the
heliodon have made the technology much more affordable,
while allowing for the fast generation of even very complex
solar envelopes.
On larger sites in particular, and when
already existing buildings complicate the generation of a solar
envelope, the available computer software saves time and can result
in more building volume.
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