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The Tower at PNC Plaza, a 32-floor building under construction in downtown Pittsburgh, uses a solar chimney and other passive air handling methods to significantly reduce energy consumption:

http://www.paladinoandco.com/case-studies/tower-at-pnc-plaza...

I can see how something like that would work in arid conditions, but in areas where it is humid, it seems like you would get a lot of problems with mold and dampness.

None of the A/C alternatives I've seen on HN in the last couple of years even try to tackle the problem of humidity. They only focus on lowering the temperature, and sometimes even increase the humidity while doing so.

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that a lot of U.S. tech startups are located in relatively arid parts of the country, such as the Bay Area. I'd like to see what they can come up with if they were all relocated to Florida, or even better, Southern China.

I think i have read about older buildings that possibly combined this with stairwells.