Cross-ventilation - is it mandatory in apartments?

Cross-ventilation to prevent mold is like putting a carbon film on a VW Beetle to make it a race car. Yes, of course, you can do it, but ask ten people how to ventilate properly and get eleven answers, none of which are correct and/or feasible. If it's "just" about preventing mold, then ventilation with a differential humidity controller. No human can ventilate that well and precisely, because no one will get up at three in the morning to measure both humidity and temperature values, calculate, and then decide whether to open the window or not. And every bathroom and kitchen needs an exhaust fan to the outside. Cross-ventilation to cool down the place? How many names do you want to give to the simple "open all windows"? Yes, of course, you can cool the place down better if you can create a draft in all directions! And what do I do now with this insight? Build only single-room residential towers with windows all around? Wouldn't it be a bit easier to simply use the millions of successful ventilation concepts installed (such as central ventilation systems with heat exchangers and defined supply and exhaust air zones)? Right, then you couldn't invent such a YouTube-style scene term like "cross-ventilation."

Wouldn't it be a bit easier to simply use the ventilation concepts that have been successfully installed millions of times (such as central ventilation systems with heat exchangers and defined supply and exhaust air rooms)? Right, then you couldn't invent a YouTube-style scene term like "cross-ventilation."

How the fear of a "draft" is a very German story, the cross & shock ventilation. :)

Ventilation with a heat exchanger is nice and all. But we recently had a thread where someone calculated how much heat can be prevented with it and how much heat can be ventilated out. Every window has more solar gains than the controlled residential ventilation can remove. It's not just the ventilation, also the shading. If you only have windows on one side, the whole apartment is basically a darkroom. What is so hard about accepting that windows only on one side are a makeshift solution done because otherwise the building structure becomes significantly more complex (there are approaches, though) and in residential construction quantity counts more than quality and the person who plans and pays for it rarely lives there themselves. I don't understand this tendency to sugarcoat things.

How the fear of the "train" is a very German story, the cross- & shock ventilation. :)

There is nothing that couldn't be complicated a little more - my grandma said "open the window" and now someone came up with "cross ventilation".

So calling cross-ventilation a YouTube scene term or even completely newly invented is somewhat unrealistic. It may be regional idiomatic, but the term is certainly not new. I first heard it at the latest in the late 80s. Before that, coming from the North, I always called it draft. But in Hesse, cross-ventilation was certainly not a new coinage even back then.

What is so difficult about accepting that windows on only one side are just a makeshift solution, done because the building structure would otherwise become much more complex (there are certainly approaches), and in residential construction quantity counts more than quality and the one who plans and pays for it rarely lives there themselves. I don’t understand this tendency to sugarcoat it.

What is so hard to understand that ventilation through windows is the cause of the core problem? It’s totally funny that I can improve it a bit by building the house differently – oh, then why not do it properly right away?

For the 5-10 nights a year when you really need to lower the temperature, yes, you need airflow. What you call it now – doesn’t matter. For the remaining 355-360 days, the window is just a dumb idea for ventilation.

I don’t understand this tendency to sugarcoat ventilation through windows.