Who came up with ventilation in skyscrapers
Executive summary
The idea of ventilating tall buildings is not the product of a single inventor but an evolving set of techniques and actors: ancient passive strategies, 19th‑century public‑health advocates and engineers who formalized ventilation, early 20th‑century mechanical air‑conditioning pioneers who enabled sealed skyscrapers, and late‑20th/21st century architects rethinking natural ventilation for high‑rises [1] [2] [3] [4]. Credit therefore attaches to multiple figures and forces—from David Boswell Reid and public health reformers to Willis Carrier and modern bioclimatic designers—each solving parts of the same problem as buildings grew taller [5] [6] [7] [4].
1. Ancient and vernacular roots: passive ventilation long before ‘invention’
Ventilation began as a response to fire, cooking and climate in prehistory and antiquity: Minoan wind‑towers and Roman hypocausts show early use of height, shafts and stack effects to move air without machines, so the fundamental principles behind ventilating tall spaces predate the skyscraper by millennia [1].
2. Nineteenth‑century public health and the formalization of ventilation
As cities densified, figures such as Lewis Leeds and public‑health advocates popularized the idea that “fresh air” reduced disease, pushing architects and engineers to add air shafts, more windows and mechanical ideas to buildings in the 1870s–1880s; these debates were central to how ventilation became a technical design problem rather than an architectural afterthought [6].
3. David Boswell Reid and the first large‑scale engineered systems
The Scottish scientist David Boswell Reid is the name most often associated with early engineered ventilation: Reid designed an innovative, fire‑driven ventilation scheme for the temporary House of Commons and is credited with pioneering organized environmental control in large interiors, though his work was contested and only partly enduring [2] [5].
4. Early skyscrapers and makeshift cooling: ventilation as improvisation
America’s first tall commercial buildings rarely contained integrated mechanical ventilation because the technology to cool and ventilate at scale lagged behind steel frames; early Chicago and New York high‑rises used tricks—ice‑fan systems, open windows, and sizeable air shafts—to try to keep workers comfortable, underscoring that ventilation in skyscrapers evolved by improvisation as buildings rose [8].
5. Willis Carrier and the shift to sealed, mechanically conditioned towers
The decisive technical enabling moment came with modern air‑conditioning: Willis H. Carrier’s humidity‑and‑cooling apparatuses made fully conditioned, sealed office towers practical and economically attractive, and Carrier’s systems were integral to early large high‑rise projects such as the Milam Building—effectively redefining how ventilation would be provided in skyscrapers through HVAC [3] [7].
6. The multiple authorship of ‘ventilation in skyscrapers’ as technology and policy
Ventilation in high‑rises is a composite achievement: standards and professional bodies (for example the historic ASHVE recommendations) set per‑person airflow targets, researchers formalized natural vs. mechanical strategies, and engineers developed hybrid systems for energy and safety—meaning credit is diffuse across scientists, standards organizations, inventors, and architects [9] [10] [11].
7. Reaction and reinvention: bioclimatic and hybrid designers reclaim natural strategies
In recent decades architects and researchers such as bioclimatic proponents (e.g., Ken Yeang and others) and campus‑based researchers have argued for returning to hybrid or natural ventilation strategies for skyscrapers to cut energy use and improve occupant wellbeing, framing Carrier’s century of conditioning as both enabling and, critics argue, over‑promoted by industry interests [4] [12].
8. What “who” means: a shorthand for a long, distributed story
Answering “who came up with ventilation in skyscrapers” therefore requires decoding the question: if it seeks a single name, the record gives multiple milestones—ancient builders for principles, Reid for engineered air in large chambers, Carrier for mechanized conditioning of tall buildings, and contemporary designers for reintegrating natural ventilation—each reflecting different moments in the problem’s technical, commercial and regulatory history [1] [5] [3] [4].