Architecture Section Head and co-founder of MODU Phu Hoang was featured on Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien to discuss MODU’s Promenade / Houston project and its self-cooling walls. The segment was featured among other recent architecture projects that are seeking to decrease energy usage on air conditioning.

In a summer with record high temperatures, we’re seeing a growing movement for self-cooling homes and businesses. It’s an effort to reduce our dependence on airconditioning and decrease our energy usage. One pilot project in Houston replicates a centuries-old consrtuction method. It’s a technique called passive design that relies on nature for climate control.

Phu Hoang is co-founder of MODU, the architecture firm that designed the building. “It’s a multilayered approach. There are different elements. We have the self-cooling walls. We have these vertical fins that provide shading, but we also integrate that with the landscape and that is very important to the project, which is that it is both architecture and landscape integrated together.”

Watch at Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien