The windcatcher, known in Farsi as a badgir (literally ‘wind grabber’), is one of the oldest and most elegant climate-control systems ever devised. Towering above rooftops across Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the UAE, these architectural chimneys have been pulling cool air into buildings for roughly three millennia. And as the world wrestles with rising temperatures and skyrocketing energy bills, architects and engineers are looking at them all over again.
