Lightweight housing in the arid periphery: Implications for thermal comfort and energy use

Throughout the arid lands in which man has settled, traditional solutions to housing have most often relied on readily accessible building materials, and on techniques which were adapted both to the characteristics of these materials and to the constraints of local climate and geography. Such vernacular housing is exemplified by the cliff dwellings and adobe pueblos of the American Southwest, as well as by the vaulted stone dwellings built by Nabateans and Byzantines in the Negev. In these examples, it may be noted that the construction techniques developed by local inhabitants employed locally available heavy materials with a high thermal inertia, capable of moderating the sharp fluctuations of heat and cold which characterize the desert climate.