The best ways to cool a home—without turning on the AC

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. As the world warms, it’s getting harder—and more expensive—to beat the heat. But architects, designers and homeowners are looking for ways to keep homes comfortable without air conditioning, or at least with less reliance on it.

For years, the idea of turning off the AC was unthinkable. Since home air conditioning became widespread in the U.S. in the 1960s, architects paid little heed to maximizing or minimizing a house’s exposure to the sun or prevailing winds.

“We could build the same house anywhere on Earth, taking the house completely out of context," says Graham Irwin, principal architect at California-based Essential Habitat Architecture. His firm is one of many that design or renovate homes with today’s focus on energy conservation in mind—creating so-called passive houses, which meet a series of energy-efficient standards to be more climate friendly. “We normally see about an 80% reduction in energy use in the houses we work on," he says.

One of the key features of a passive house is that it is heavily insulated and sealed up tight to keep warmth inside during the winter and cool air inside during the summer. Passive houses also incorporate passive cooling techniques, using architectural and natural methods to keep a house from heating up by blocking the sun and enhancing ventilation. Take the home called the Midori Haus in Santa Cruz, Calif.—a passive house that has no air conditioning.

When Chie Kawahara and her husband decided to buy the rundown, nearly century-old bungalow in 2010, they had to undertake a major remodeling. They decided to make it as green as possible. Kawahara met Irwin of Essential Habitat at a passive-house conference and engaged him to help with the