Badgir windcatcher
Badgir (torre de viento) y cisterna refrigerada
- Date
- c. 1000 · confidence low
- Place
- Yazd, Iran
- Credited to
- Builders of the Iranian plateau and the Persian Gulf
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Tower with oriented openings that catches the wind and channels it down into rooms or into cisterns (ab anbar), cooling it over water and drawing out hot air. It allows desert cities to be inhabited without external power.
The wind-catcher (malqaf) already appears in Egyptian New Kingdom paintings; Persian badgirs are documented in 10th-century sources (Siraf), and the surviving towers are mostly Safavid and Qajar.
What it led to
- bioclimatic architecture of Yazd and the Gulf
- cisterns with cool water in summer
- passive ventilation in modern buildings