History of passive solar building design

The techniques of passive solar building design were practiced for thousands of years, by necessity, before the advent of mechanical heating and cooling. It has remained a traditional part of vernacular architecture in many countries. There is evidence that ancient cultures considered factors such as solar orientation, thermal mass and ventilation in the construction of residential dwellings. Fully developed solar architecture and urban planning methods were first employed by the Greeks and Chinese who oriented their buildings toward the south to provide light and warmth. Nearly two and a half millennia ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aeschylus wrote: "Only primitives & barbarians lack knowledge of houses turned to face the Winter sun." Similarly, Socrates said: "Now, supposing a house to have a southern aspect, sunshine during winter will steal in under the verandah, but in summer, when the sun traverses a path right over our heads, the roof will afford an agreeable shade, will it not?" Roman bathhouses had large south facing windows. Solar design was largely abandoned in Europe after the Fall of Rome but continued unabated in China where cosmological traditions associate the south with summer, warmth and health.

Although earlier experimental solar houses were constructed using a mixture of active and passive solar techniques, some of the first European engineered passive solar houses of the modern era were built in Germany after World War I, when the Allies occupied the Ruhr area, including most of Germany's coal mines.

Architect George F. Keck was a pioneering designer of passive solar houses in the 1930s and 40s. He designed the all-glass "House of Tomorrow" for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago and noted that it was warm inside on sunny winter days prior to the installation of the furnace. Following this he gradually started incorporating more south-facing windows into his designs for other clients, and in 1940 designed a passive solar home for real estate developer Howard Sloan in Glenview, Illinois. The Sloan House was called a "solar house" by the Chicago Tribune, the first modern use of that term. Sloan then built a number of passive solar houses, and his publicity efforts contributed to a significant "solar house" movement in the 1940s.

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