Aren't there cities in Texas that similarly hot and humid? To my recollection, contemporary architecture and city planning throughout Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the UAE are all derived from that of Texas.
You did say contemporary which is certainly after when my house was designed, but even my 1930s-era house in Houston, TX was designed for the heat. In fact at least contemporary residential has gone the way of highly insulated homes meant to keep heat and moisture out and breathe as little as possible. Which works 99% of the time until a hurricane takes out power and air conditioning with it. Then they are sweaty, hellish boxes.
Houston didn't really take off until the invention of air conditioning but even when my house was built people engineered around it. When first purchased my house had a number of shade trees because blocking sunlight is extremely effective. Every room with the exception of one bathroom has multiple screen windows to facilitate natural airflow through the house. That one bathroom still has two doors and a window to help with air movement.
In addition there is a whole house fan that draws air from throughout the house to the attic. This helps both exchange air when people want air movement which is cooling and also helps move heat out of the attic which is coming from a blazing hot roof. The attic itself is nearly the same height as the floor below it and each end of the attic has huge slatted exhaust ports. They are easily four feet wide and seven or eight feet tall. They are needed because the whole house fan can draw hard enough to break a window, or so I've been told.
Although the house was designed to breathe and move air because it was all they could do to combat the heat these days I shut all the windows and run the air conditioner. I may be a fan of the architecture but I'm not a fan of the lifestyle. My friends in sealed houses have much lower energy bills, but if my power fails I can at least open the windows.
