Bowl-Shaped Roofs Collect Rainwater and Cool House
by Sara Burrows
A brilliant new bowl-shaped roof serves a double purpose for people living in hot, arid climates — providing free water and free air conditioning.
The “Concave Roof” is designed to “help even the smallest quantities of rain flow down the roof and eventually coalesce into bigger drops, just right for harvesting before they evaporate,” the architects told Arch Daily.
The shape of the roof is perfect not only for maximizing water collection but also for providing shade and airflow between itself and the interior layer of the roof, helping keep the house below cool.
The “bowl roof” also provides a second cooling feature. The water it collects is stored in tanks in the walls of the house, cooling the walls and insulating the house.
The Iranian architecture company BMDesign Studios hopes the design will help provide water security in a part of the world that receives less than a third of the global average for annual rainfall.
The company is working on a school building as a prototype, which is expected to be able to collect and store over 7000 gallons of water with 10,000 square feet of rooftop.
