Street and city
Climate shelter
librarycommunity centerschoolyardparkmarket
A cool, free place open to the public where anyone can spend the hottest hours. It can be a library, a community center, a schoolyard with trees or a park with shade, water and benches.
What it solves
It protects the health of those who suffer most from heat, such as older people, children, homeless people and those who live in rooms that overheat. It turns a public building into a place of care and encounter during heat waves.
Today
Choose places people already know and can reach on foot, with shade, moving air, drinking water, restrooms and seating. Open them during the hottest hours and also on weekends. Signpost them well.
Common mistake
Putting a refuge sign on a place that closes at midday, charges admission or has no water or place to sit.
Tomorrow
With more days of extreme heat, every school, library and community hall can be designed to serve as a refuge, with deep shade, cross ventilation and water. Offering activities for older people and children makes people actually come.
Fact Barcelona aims for every resident to have a refuge no more than 10 minutes from home.
Where it comes from
- 1Cooling centers several cities in the United States and Canada, of diffuse origin
Libraries, community centers and senior centers open as cool places during heat waves. - 2Open schoolyards Paris, France, since 2018
Schoolyards are being changed from asphalt to permeable ground with trees and vegetable gardens. Almost 50 of them open to the neighborhood outside school hours. - 3Municipal network of refuges Barcelona, Spain, since 2020
The network reached about 400 signposted refuges in libraries, civic centers, swimming pools, markets and parks. - 4Bahrain Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Venice, Italy, 2025
Its passive cooling refuge, which draws on wind towers and shaded courtyards, won the Golden Lion as a response to extreme heat in public spaces.
Sources
- elsaltodiario.com/barcelona/ciudades-calor-extremo-un-balance-del-modelo-refugios-climatic
- climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/metadata/case-studies/paris-oasis-schoolyard-programme-fran
- austria-architects.com/en/topics/biennale-architettura-2025/golden-lions-to-bahrain-and-ca
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_center
See also
Also in Street and city
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.