traditional buildings in Qatar

Vernacular buildings in 
Qatar have employed 
some ingenious passive techniques
in order to restore thermal 
comfort within the building 

particularly during the hottest
hour of the day.  
The buildings were joined close to each other. 
The houses, on the other hand, shared
walls and this minimized the surface exposed to the sun. 
The streets were like a trench.
This helped the buildings to shade one another as 
well as to shade the streets. 
The only spaces that received a great amount 
of sunshine were the open spaces such as the courtyards. 
At midday the courtyard received more solar
 radiation than the shaded areas. 
As these heated up, hotter air rose and denser, 
cool air rushed in automatically. 
The cool air was drawn from the shaded streets. 
The streets oriented
in the direction of the prevailing wind which 
created a low pressure area in the open
space thus moving the air from the streets into the living spaces