The growth of apartment living in the hot and dry climate of Kashan, often without attention to passive design principles, has led to increased energy consumption and dependence on mechanical systems. This research aims to investigate the extent to which passive strategies are utilized in contemporary apartments in Kashan and to provide climate-responsive suggestions based on the historical architecture of this city. The research method is based on a qualitative-comparative analysis of three contemporary apartment samples and three historical houses (Tabātabāei, Borujerdi, Abbāsiān), evaluating them based on three main passive design strategies in Kashan's hot-dry climate: "heat prevention," "heat modulation," and "heat dissipation." The findings indicate that in contemporary apartments, elements such as wooden sun breakers, planters in front of windows, and ventilation shafts are employed locally and unsystematically, and there is no climatic integration between form, space, and envelope. In contrast, the historical houses of Kashan exhibit systematic integration in spatial organization, thermal mass, buffer spaces, and natural ventilation, simultaneously realizing the three aforementioned strategies. Consequently, reinterpreting the functional logic of historical elements (not as formal imitation) can improve the thermal performance of contemporary apartments in Kashan through atriums, deep semi-open spaces, effective ventilation shafts, thermal mass in envelopes, and spatial buffer layers. This design framework, unlike merely formal or additive approaches, is applicable to multi-story residential projects in hot-dry climates.