The Growing Moral Responsibility for Designing for Shade
Date Posted: September 24, 2024
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, People,
From Building Design + Construction: In the tragic first chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson’s breakthrough novel, The Ministry of the Future, readers follow a caregiver as he navigates an Indian city amidst a crushing heat wave. The power grid fails. Mass death occurs. And, before and amidst it, people seek shade to survive. We read of them “walk(ing) in the shade as much as possible,” or “lurch(ing) toward the next patch of shade.”
While these are fictional passages, they reiterate that shade is critically important in defense against hotter and hotter temperatures. The data is clear that “standing in direct sunlight exposes people to solar radiation, which can make the air feel 10-15 degrees warmer than the actual temperature.” Elsewhere, recent simulations from The Ohio State University found that on a day with a high of 93.33 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature could have been 4.87 degrees lower if young trees in the area were fully grown and 20 more fully grown trees had been planted.