First Sentence

"Hundreds of millions of people in the world today live in poor housing under adverse climatic conditions that stress their undernourished bodies toward the limits of human endurance and occasionally beyond. The poverty of these people severely restrains their ability to procure the energy required to provide healthful climatic conditions within their homes. Yet their ancestors survived, and often lived comfortably, for centuries under the same climatic conditions in dwellings of traditional design. They were able to do so because they made use of the energy available locally in the environment. Many traditional societies in climates with cold seasons relied on firewood and organic waste to provide them with the heat they needed. People living in the hot, arid climates, however, were faced with a different problem: high daytime and cool nighttime temperatures with very little humidity. More than firewood is needed to solve climatic problems of this type. The solutions that were found relied on energy from the sun and wind and the innovative, architectural structures and forms that were developed to make use of this natural energy. The vernacular architecture of the Arab World and neighboring regions not only solved the climatic problems but did so with a combination of beauty and physical and social functionality. This book describes some elements of the vernacular architecture developed by these societies over many generations to provide a comfortable microclimate using natural energy."