This interior stairwell is at a office building in downtown Hilo, often times you will see something similar to this in many Hawaiian buildings. Due to the temperatures and humidity most buildings try to take advantage of the tradewinds any way they can especially since air conditioning is very scarce (expensive electricity contributes to that) and evaporative coolers are worse than ineffective (when the humidity is this high you really don't want to ADD to it!)Post and Pier house styles are preferred for this reason as well, the air can circulate underneath the home and cool it (as well as keeping the living area up of the ground and thereby out of reach of most pests and flood waters), most people in Hawaii live a "greener" life than they realize...or ever intended; using filtered rainwater, less mechanical cooling by specialized home designs, recycling, Freecycling, composting, eating home grown produce, and lots of people hang their washed clothes out to dry (electricity and gas are just to expensive), solar is also used from simple passive to the most elaborate of set ups. But we still have a long way to go...
