IELTS Reading: 🏥Back to the future of skyscraper design.

This passage 2 Academic IELTS Reading is a problem-solution structure.



• The problem: air-conditioning units generate 'spectacular and largely unnecessary energy use and carbon emissions'.


• The solution: use natural ventilation, as they did in 19th-century hospitals.



This IELTS Reading is packed full of useful vocab like 'to squander energy' (= to waste) and 'it uses a FRACTION of the electricity/at a FRACTION of the energy cost' (=a small or tiny part, amount, or proportion of something).

and adjectives as nouns ('the prosperous' = the people who are prosperous and 'the public').