Reminds me of a few things I've read about how fancy new houses in the southern US have omitted design features which cleverly deal with heat in the absence of air conditioning, so an energy crisis is going to put those homeowners in hell. It's important architectural technology to preserve.
I live in Florida, and yes, we switched to the modern American style after WWII. That is, build any box we want, and let the central heat and air make it livable.
The old cracker houses here are substantially different. They are wood frame, 2-3 feet up on masonry pillars, with a shotgun floor layout. They have high ceilings with ceiling fans, large porches, roof of sheet metal roofing with large roof overhangs and high slopes, and are usually sited under the shade of live oaks.
There are two problems there: first, most of the features that make a house comfortable in hot weather without AC, like huge windows for good air circulation, make it more expensive to cool with AC. Second, while the various features make a house more comfortable than many houses without them, they are still nowhere near as comfortable as an air conditioned house.
You know, still today a ridiculously small proportion of houses have A/C in Europe, including hot places like Italy or Spain. You just don't f*cking need it.
Pamplona would get up to 100 degrees in the summer, but it was still cool and breezy in the streets. Everything's made of thick stone, which takes a lot to heat up. Streets are narrow and shady so they never get enough sunlight to heat the stone. Balconies have shutters to completely block out the sun for the few hours a day it's directly on you.
We didn't have AC, and it was pleasantly cool even in the heat of the summer.
Especially since high humidity keeps things from cooling off much at night. I grew up in the Washington, DC suburbs without AC - it bothered my father's sinuses - but I would seriously try to avoid living without it now. I remember all the crap I had to do to keep from dripping sweat on my schoolwork in the early fall and late spring - not fun.
Depends, inland Florida, Georgia, high humidity locations in general yeah, there's only so much you can do.
Down here in New Mexico and Arizona, on the other hand, you can get really really far with passive design. In a desert shade and a stiff breeze will keep you nicely comfortable even when it hits 40 in the sun. Combined with good insulation and high thermal mass and a house can stay under 25 even in the dead of summer.
Of course in a desert even if you can't swing shade and a breeze you can use swamp coolers instead of ac which are so nice.
