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A section through a house with a windcatcher on warm saffron: wind enters the slotted top of the tower and a blue line traces cool air down the shaft, across a pool in the room below and out to the courtyard, while a red line shows warm air rising out of the other shaft. A small plan shows the tower divided into shafts.
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The Pattern Atlas

Windcatcher

No. 47 of 100 · free · 300 dpi

What you seeA section through a house with a windcatcher on warm saffron: wind enters the slotted top of the tower and a blue line traces cool air down the shaft, across a pool in the room below and out to the courtyard, while a red line shows warm air rising out of the other shaft. A small plan shows the tower divided into shafts.

What it meansThe badgir, Persian for windcatcher, is a tower with vents at the top, divided inside into shafts. It draws breezes down into rooms and lets warm air escape, cooling houses in hot, dry towns such as Yazd.

Where it worksA sunny, curious plate for a kitchen, a study or a child's room.

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2:3 · 7200 × 10800 px4×6 · 8×12 · 12×18 · 16×24 · 20×30 · 24×36 in
3:4 · 5400 × 7200 px6×8 · 9×12 · 12×16 · 18×24 in
4:5 · 7200 × 9000 px4×5 · 8×10 · 16×20 · 24×30 in
11:14 · 3300 × 4200 px11×14 in
A-series · 7023 × 9933 pxA5 · A4 · A3 · A2 · A1

Everything is one ZIP: every shape and size, the phone wallpaper, the SVGs and a printing guide.

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More from The Pattern Atlas

All 100 prints
A section through a qanat on cream, with the vertical scale exaggerated: a mother well reaches the water table beneath the hills, a gently sloping tunnel carries the water out under the plain, a line of shafts with spoil heaps marks its course, and it emerges at an outlet beside trees and houses.QanatNo. 48
The plan of a courtyard house on soft rose: a paved court with four sunken planted beds, orange trees and a star-shaped fountain at the centre, a columned gallery around it, long rooms on all four sides, a bent entrance passage and a stair, with an elevation of the courtyard facade above in taller formats.Courtyard HouseNo. 49
The plan of a walled garden on deep teal: water channels cross at a central pool and octagonal pavilion, dividing the garden into four quarters, each split again into beds of fruit trees, with rows of cypresses along the main walks and small pools at the ends of the axes.Chahar BaghNo. 50
Four kinds of merlon drawn as strips of wall on pale blue: stepped sandstone merlons, pierced stepped merlons on brick, trefoil merlons on a wall of alternating red and pale courses, and pyramid-capped merlons on a rammed-earth wall.MerlonsNo. 51
Three panels of carved stucco in cream on terracotta: style A with compartments of deeply cut vine leaves and grapes, style B with flatter leaves picked out by drilled dots and notches, and style C, the bevelled style, with mirrored abstract forms cut on a slant so that no background is left.Samarra StuccoNo. 52
A wooden ceiling seen from below on ink: interlaced straps of light wood form eight-pointed stars and polygons painted red, green, blue and gold, framed by a frieze of small gold stars, with the flat centre set within four sloping sides divided by gilded hip lines and a star boss in the middle.Lacería CeilingNo. 53
The facade of a Mamluk sabil on saffron: below, large windows with bronze grilles set in walls of alternating red and pale stone under joggled lintels and inlaid arches; above, an open loggia of pointed arches behind a wooden balustrade, sheltered by a projecting wooden canopy.SabilNo. 54
A salsabil on deep teal, in elevation and plan or section: a niche framed with gold stars and crowned with muqarnas holds a marble slab carved with chevron ripples, water runs down it into a basin and then along a narrow channel with small pools to an octagonal fountain.SalsabilNo. 55

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