Thermal standards can be conceived as the latest version of applied climatic determinism. Western societies are obsessed with redefining their unsettled relationship to climate via thermal standards and green labels. However, architecture has always been a major means to define societies’ relationship to climate deliberately. Adapting by means of architecture to the ambient conditions is a cross-cultural practice, that goes beyond certain architectural styles and traditions. For a few decades now we have called this ability to adapt via built structure as “passive climate control”.