My aunt was selling solar heating in Minnesota. People would be really interested until they found out the first step was doing a really thorough (and somewhat costly) job insulating the house, which provides more energy savings than the solar panels themselves in most cases (it's certainly more cost-effective). They didn't really care about saving energy, they just wanted solar panels as a status symbol.

As long as energy remains subsidized and people don't have to pay for the externalities they create by polluting, eco-friendly innovations like hybrid and plug-in electric cars, solar power, and breathable skins will remain of interest only as status symbols and badges of group identity.

(as an aside, Europe and Japan seem to do a better job of actually giving people financial incentives to waste less, although people should correct me if my view is naïve)

By contrast, the amount of heating or cooling a building needs generally is set by the distributed conditions throughout the building. For example, many commercial buildings require cooling in the core throughout the year-- without regard for the insolation or the air temperature at the envelope. So this technology will not, in many cases, eliminate the need for mechanical assist.

Another aspect of the control problem is the wishes of occupants in the perimeter spaces. As described, the incident sunlight, or the interior temperature, are meant to control the porosity of the material. Thus occupants get no say in the amount of sunlight they get, or the amount of air passing through the wall.

Competing technologies allow much more control. For example, "smart glass" can regulate the amount of light entering a space, either in response to occupants, or to a building-level controller. Passive inlet vents can maintain a desired airflow rate, in the face of changes in wind pressure and indoor-outdoor temperature differences (controlling to airflow, rather than to local temperature, is desired for air quality reasons).

Good luck with that in Florida. Open a window, it gets hotter.

In temperate climates, the temperature outside might be just cold enough, but not too cold, that "opening the windows", or something equivalent, might be a viable strategy.

Definitely not a great idea in Florida for sure, but for Southern California I think its pretty compelling

I have no idea how they did it. This was mostly in coastal areas, so there was much wind. But it even worked in inland areas. The windows did not let in much light. There was usually no air conditioning, and inside was generally much cooler than outside.

In any modern buildings, air conditioning was required. I also expect this system might not have held up in the warmest summer months.

Florida is similar to Cuba. If you own a home located close to the beach, you're in good shape. You can leave your windows open all winter, and most of the fall and spring. As you move inland you lose the ocean breeze cooling effect very, very quickly though.

I grew up in a turn of the century bungalow home about 3 miles from the beach on the east coast of Florida. The home was built, and lived in, by a contractor who developed much of my home town in the 1900-1915 time period. The homes had many windows with long-ish eaves (for shade) so you could take advantage of the breeze. Back in the early 1900s, that was the only option you had.

Growing up, we only had a window unit air conditioner, and my parents couldn't afford to run it much, so I can personally attest to the difficulties associated with living in South Florida with no air-conditioning. It was never "quite cool" (by air-conditioned standards) in our house during the summer, even though the home was designed specifically for the environment. For most of the day it stayed cooler than it was outside, but on a cloud-free summer day, there was no relief, inside or out.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use innovative techniques to reduce energy usage, but I am contesting the idea that you can build an above-ground zero-energy home in Florida.

This was October to May, so like I said, the system may break down in summer. It was still warm through those months compared to what I know in Canada, but I know summer is warmer still.

Unfortunately, you correctly observed that October through May is an entirely different animal in this region. All the windows in our home are open currently. We get many opportunities like this through the end of February, tapering off through March and April. By May, things in Florida start to heat up. Most could manage it, but I wouldn't call it comfortable.

In June through September, you can sit on your porch at 10 PM and sweat will stream down your face due to the heat and humidity. It is an insufferable burden to go without air-conditioning in this place during the summer months.

I also suspect that Cuba, being such a narrow strip, and having significant elevations in areas, has a more temperate climate than flat, hot, and wet Florida.

buildings spend energy to cool down/warm up because the outside temperature is unfavorable. Can't see how opening the windows would help

This is evident by some rooms feeling stuff regardless of open windows and others just downright unfriendly to anything loose. Toss in dark shingles (brown or darker) and a lack of large trees and most modern homes are not really habitable in summer without air conditioning. Fortunately I have ceiling fans in all rooms I spend time in but I wish architects for regular housing would spend more time with making a home livable with natural movement of air.

  do not *ever* advertise or suggest you are going to 
  use material that is "like human skin".  Its creepy.

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My organization's site does the exact same thing, and we are a privacy professional association[2]. Very few, even among our membership, care about the cookies, but it is still important to comply with the law.

[1]http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/privacy_and_electron...

[2]https://privacyassociation.org

Long live human ingenuity!