A perspective on fifty years of natural ventilation research

•Historical review of natural ventilation research over past 50 years.•Emphasises the contribution made to research literature by Building and Environment.•Identifies major developments and reasons for changes in research emphasis.

A brief history is given of research into natural ventilation over the first fifty years of the Journal, from the personal perspective of the author. One of my aims is to give an indication of the contribution that the Journal has made to reporting research on this subject. Another aim is to provide a background for researchers who are starting out in research. There are nine areas of research that I have identified, namely:- steady envelope flow models; flow characteristics of openings; unsteady envelope flow models; internal air motion, zonal models and stratification; contaminant transport; age of air; CFD and its applications; scale modelling; full-scale measurements. For reasons given in the text, some of these topics are only very briefly mentioned. For example, the sections on contaminant transport and CFD are relatively brief, partly because they are the subject of other papers in this issue. (Similarly, the feasibility of natural ventilation relies on the adaptability of the occupants to be comfortable, but thermal comfort is not covered at all here, because it too is the subject of other papers.) The paper concludes with a few personal comments on the design process, since the underlying aim of research is to minimise the risks associated with naturally ventilated buildings.