Bioclimatic design strategies in temperate climate. Consistency of passive cooling and heating.

In the temperate climate, the consistency of bioclimatic designs for heating and cooling is essential. However, the traditional Japanese houses which have excellent cooling techniques often disclose their poor thermal performance in the winter time. Since Jong it has been said that they sacrificed the heating performance in return for the cooling performance, as a result of their choice in the time when the consistency was technically impossible. This principle is often considered as a kind of critical expression of their aesthetic sense to give characteristic forms onto the traditional architecture in Japan.
Obviously, this principle can not be accepted in the extremely cold region, like Hokkaido and they have been struggling to find their ways of building after they had settled to Hokkaido as frontiers. It is spontaneous that they imported new technologies, such as super-insulating and super-air tightening from the northern countries in the recent time.
On the other hand, these new technologies become popular also in hot climate region of Japan because they are believed to be effective to reduce the cooling load of air-conditioning. It is obvious that this is a completely different concept from the traditional concept of bioclimatic design in Japan and sometimes clear contradictions can be observed between them because bioclimatic cooling designs are not always to be effective to reduce the air-conditioning load although they can create the natural pleasant indoor climate. It seems very necessary for the integrated design to coordinate the contrast between concepts.