Summer in Uzbekistan is more than just heat — it creates an environment where street animals have almost nowhere to escape. While people can retreat to air-conditioned spaces, cats remain on overheated streets, where ordinary shade is not enough to protect them from extreme temperatures. For Miratorg, this became an opportunity to look at animal care beyond the product itself and find a solution rooted in the urban environment.
Problem
During summer, the streets of Uzbekistan turn into an extremely hot urban environment. People can escape the heat in air-conditioned buildings, cars, and other sheltered spaces. Street cats have almost no such options. Ordinary shade protects only from direct sunlight, but not from the heated air and surrounding surfaces. Standard animal shelters do not fully solve the problem either, as most are designed to protect against cold weather and rain rather than prolonged Central Asian heat. The challenge behind MEOWASIS was to create a safe shelter for street cats that could protect them from extreme heat and operate continuously — without electricity, air conditioning, or complex urban infrastructure.
Solution
The Solution Was Found in Uzbekistan’s Architecture Instead of looking for ready-made solutions among pet products, the team turned to traditional Uzbek architecture, which for centuries has addressed a similar challenge: how to maintain a more comfortable indoor environment in extreme heat. A German engineer who had studied the structure of Uzbek mahallas and their architectural principles joined the project. As a result, MEOWASIS does not imitate the appearance of a traditional house. It transfers its climate-responsive logic into a completely different scale — the scale of a single cat. How MEOWASIS Works The structure is built around a rigid plywood frame combined with a thermal insulation layer that slows the transfer of external heat into the shelter. The most vulnerable part of the structure — the roof — received an additional layer of soil and living grass, creating another physical barrier between direct sunlight and the main structure. The team deliberately rejected fans and active cooling systems. Otherwise, the shelter would depend on electricity, wiring, maintenance, and constant supervision. MEOWASIS is designed to work like architecture, not like a household appliance: its form, materials, and structural layers perform their function around the clock, without electricity or human intervention.
Results
Integrated Into the Existing Life of the City MEOWASIS shelters were not installed randomly. They were placed near locations where street cats already regularly come for food and water, and where local residents already care for them. Instead of forcing animals to change their usual routes, the team added one missing element to an already existing informal urban system — a safe shelter. The Role of Miratorg For Miratorg, the project became an extension of the idea of animal care beyond the product itself. For a cat living on the street, well-being depends not only on access to food, but also on the environment it lives in. MEOWASIS brought together Uzbekistan’s architectural knowledge, engineering expertise, simple and accessible materials, and an understanding of real street-animal behavior. We did not invent a new technology to fight the heat. We took architectural principles that have helped people live in Uzbekistan’s climate for centuries and applied them at the scale of a single street cat.
