Developing climate-adaptive architecture in warming climates through collaboration, practice and monitoring.
ARC is an international programme that brings together design practitioners and academics to develop high-performance strategies for energy-efficient, climate-adaptable buildings using step-by-step optimised mixed-mode ventilation and in-use feedback loops.
The programme addresses the pressing challenge of achieving thermal comfort in hot and humid climates. It focuses on developing, testing, and disseminating innovative passive cooling solutions that are affordable, sustainable, and adaptable to local needs.
ARC is a team of volunteers led by Andrew Simmonds of Simmonds Mills, a UK-based architectural R&D firm, in partnership with the Al-Mizan Children's Ecovillage in Tanzania - the first of several ARC-initiated field-testing R&D sites in Africa and Asia.
The programme targets two key markets:
- Lower-income self-builders - affordable, accessible solutions to improve housing quality
- Higher-income managed self-builders - passive cooling innovations that integrate with modern building standards
ARC integrates robust R&D with community engagement to support innovative, scalable pathways for improving thermal comfort in buildings - addressing both immediate needs and long-term sustainability goals for people living in environmentally and socio-economically challenging regions. ARC solutions aim to create cool, comfortable indoor environments without the immediate need for mechanical cooling and dehumidification equipment.
| Section | Path | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Home | / | Front-page document (ARC Impact), rendered in-page as a PDF |
| ARC Standard | /arc-standard | Overview of the ARC building standard |
| Cool Buildings Guide | /cool-buildings-guide/ | 8-part practical guide covering air movement, thermal mass, insect protection, and more |
| Science | /science/ | 7-part deep dive into the physics and research behind ARC strategies |
| Projects | /projects/ | Project showcase grid — the page that used to be the landing page |
| Reflections | /reflections/ | 6 in-depth case studies and practitioner reflections |
| People | /people | Team profiles and portraits |
| Map | /map | Interactive Mapbox map of projects and climate data |
| Blog | /blog/ | News and updates (SPA with hash routing) |
| Support | /support | How to support the programme |
| About | /about | Mission, team, and background |
| Contact | /contact | Contact form |
- Air Movement
- Avoiding Heat
- Cooling the Air
- Drying the Air
- Environmental Performance
- Keeping Heat Out
- Practical Constraints
- Thermal Mass
- ARC Standard
- Physical Factors
- Keeping Cool
- Three Zone Concept
- Resources
- Insect Protection
- Citizen Science
Several interactive features are maintained as independent repositories and automatically synced into this site via GitHub Actions. Each lives in the embedded/ directory.
| Project | Description | Auto-synced |
|---|---|---|
| projects-grid | Visual project showcase grid | Yes |
| CBG-grid | Cool Buildings Guide topic grid | Yes |
| project-map | Interactive Mapbox map with project pins, weather stations, and Köppen-Geiger climate zones | Yes |
| arc-people | Team portrait carousel with biographies | Yes |
| reflections | Reflections article grid | Yes |
| greenspace-initiative | ARC Greenspace Initiative archive | Yes |
| science-grid | Science topic grid | Yes |
| arc_tz_temp_humid | Live temperature & humidity dashboard (auto-builds twice daily) | Yes |
| arc_tz_weather | Weather data dashboard | Pending |
| technical-criteria | Technical criteria PDF viewer | Static |
Source repo push
→ notify-main-site.yml sends repository_dispatch to this repo
→ sync-embedded.yml clones source, copies built output into embedded/
→ deploy.yml triggers GitHub Pages deployment
Each sub-project repo contains a notify-main-site.yml workflow that fires on push to main. This repo's sync-embedded.yml receives the dispatch, clones the source, strips build artefacts (.py, .md, .git, __pycache__, etc.), and copies the output into embedded/<folder>/.
- Navigate to
/admin/and authenticate with a GitHub Personal Access Token (fine-grained, scoped to this repo with Contents read/write) - Create a post using the rich text editor (supports bold, italic, headings, lists, links, and image uploads)
- On publish, the admin page uses the GitHub Contents API to commit post data and images directly to the repository
- GitHub Pages auto-deploys within 1–2 minutes
- If LinkedIn cross-posting is enabled, the
linkedin-post.ymlworkflow automatically shares the post to the ARC LinkedIn page
blog/
├── index.html ← SPA with hash-based routing (/blog/#post-slug)
├── posts.json ← Post manifest (loaded client-side)
├── posts/ ← Individual post JSON files
├── images/ ← Uploaded post images
└── authors/ ← Author profile images
Requires the following repository configuration:
- Secrets:
LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN,LINKEDIN_ORG_ID - Variable:
LINKEDIN_ENABLED=true
The workflow reads new post data, publishes to the LinkedIn organisation page, and saves the resulting LinkedIn URL back to the post JSON.
ARC collects environmental data from monitoring equipment at field sites. Two dashboards visualise this data:
| Dashboard | Path | Data |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature & Humidity | /graphs/arc-tz-temp-humid/ | Indoor/outdoor T&H readings from Tanzania site sensors |
| Weather | /graphs/arc-tz-weather | Local weather station data |
The temperature & humidity dashboard auto-builds twice daily via scheduled GitHub Actions in its source repository, pulling fresh sensor data each cycle.
Dashboard access is password-protected - the deploy.yml workflow injects a SHA-256 hash of the ARC_GRAPHS_PASSWORD secret at deploy time.
| Workflow | Trigger | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| deploy.yml | Push to main | Injects password hashes into protected pages, deploys to GitHub Pages |
| sync-embedded.yml | repository_dispatch | Syncs embedded sub-project files from their source repositories |
| linkedin-post.yml | Push to blog/posts/*.json | Cross-posts new blog entries to LinkedIn (when enabled) |
- Platform: GitHub Pages
- Domain:actionresearchprojects.net (custom domain via CNAME)
- Mirror:actionresearchprojects.github.io
- Deploy: Automatic on push to
main(1–2 minute propagation)
- Layout: Fixed-width 1440px design (1366px for support page)
- Typography:Ubuntu (Google Fonts with woff2 fallback)
- Responsive scaling:
<meta name="viewport" content="width=1440">allows browsers to auto-scale;fluid-scaling.jsapplies dynamic zoom on desktop - Orientation: Mobile devices (≤1024px) are guided to landscape orientation via an overlay prompt
sitemap.xml- 54 indexed URLsrobots.txt- blocks/admin/and/embedded/from crawlers- Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags on all pages
- Canonical URLs set per page
.
├── .github/workflows/ GitHub Actions (deploy, sync, LinkedIn)
├── admin/ Blog post editor (PAT-authenticated)
├── assets/
│ ├── fonts/ Woff2 web fonts
│ ├── images/ Site images, favicons, OG image
│ └── pdf/ Front-page document + shared pdf.js viewer
├── blog/ Blog SPA, post data, and images
├── cool-buildings-guide/ 8 guide topic pages
├── embedded/ Auto-synced sub-project sites
│ ├── arc-people/
│ ├── arc_tz_temp_humid/
│ ├── arc_tz_weather/
│ ├── CBG-grid/
│ ├── greenspace-initiative/
│ ├── project-map/
│ ├── projects-grid/
│ ├── reflections/
│ ├── science-grid/
│ └── technical-criteria/
├── graphs/ Data dashboards
├── projects/ Project pages
├── reflections/ Case study pages
├── science/ Science topic pages
├── index.html Home page
├── about.html About ARC
├── arc-standard.html ARC Standard overview
├── contact.html Contact form
├── map.html Interactive project map
├── people.html Team profiles
├── support.html Support the programme
├── privacy.html Privacy policy
├── 404.html Custom error page
├── CNAME Custom domain config
├── robots.txt Crawler rules
├── sitemap.xml Sitemap for search engines
├── fluid-scaling.css Responsive scaling styles
├── fluid-scaling.js Dynamic zoom script
└── orientation-lock.css Mobile orientation overlay
- Create the repository under the
actionresearchprojectsGitHub organisation - Add a
.github/workflows/notify-main-site.ymlworkflow that sends arepository_dispatchto this repo on push - Add the
MAIN_SITE_PATsecret to the new repo (a GitHub PAT with repo scope) - If the repo name differs from the desired
embedded/folder name, add a mapping insync-embedded.yml's "Resolve embedded folder name" step
| Secret / Variable | Where | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
SYNC_PAT | This repo | PAT used so sync commits trigger the deploy workflow |
ARC_GRAPHS_PASSWORD | This repo | Password for accessing data dashboards (hashed at deploy time) |
LINKEDIN_ACCESS_TOKEN | This repo | OAuth token for LinkedIn API (optional) |
LINKEDIN_ORG_ID | This repo | LinkedIn organisation ID (optional) |
LINKEDIN_ENABLED | This repo (variable) | Enables LinkedIn cross-posting when set to true |
MAIN_SITE_PAT | Each sub-repo | PAT used to send dispatch events to this repo |
- Website:actionresearchprojects.net
- LinkedIn:ARC Cool Buildings
© 2026 ARC, a programme of Simmonds Mills. All rights reserved.