Dream & Realisation

Research ProjectFuture Systems, Project Zed, London, 1995

Team:Frank Nederveen

Oliver HamesOlivier TerrissePieter Soetaert

Roy NashSander Koper

Some general information:

In 1995 Future Systems designs three speculative mixed-used projects, called Project Zed, for different cities in Europe. This is part of a research development with fundings from the European Union. All three of the buildings should be, besides being architectural inspiring, energy-efficient. In London, they designed an elegant, steel-structured tower building with a wind turbine in the middle of it. The form of the tower is designed to drive the wind through the turbine in the centre.

Location:

The hole in the building is directed to the South-West.

N

Wind direction:

Most frequent available wind direction: South-West (results only from the last two

weeks)

Average wind speed:

January: 4 m/sJuly: 5 m/s (Results over the last 30 years)

Program:

The noise created by the turbine is reduced inside the offices by placing service functions between the offices and the turbine.

Program:

Most of the floors are offices-floors, only the top layers are designed as apartments. The form of the floor plans guarantees sufficient amounts of daylight, also in the back of the offices.

Construction:

The building has a steel-based structure placed in the façade.

The structure can be divided in three parts: - The lower part works as a table for the rest of the building.- 2 Tube-constructions are containing the offices.- The top part is ensuring the buildings stability.

Ways to look to wind speed in relation to the building mass:

The conservation of mass is a fundamental concept of physics. So at any plane perpendicular to the center line of the tube, the same amount of mass passes through which means that if the mass and the density stay the same, the velocity has to increase when the area decreases, which is exactly what happens in the hole of the future systems building. Here the higher velocity in the inside of the hole is used to propel a wind turbine.

Ways to look to wind speed in relation to the building mass:

Program found at the website of the Glenn Research Centre by NASA which is telling you the principles of wind speed around masses.

Task:

Our research task was to look at the influences of wind on the building by testing it with a model in the windtunnel and by testing it with a digital 3D-model in a software program called Maya.

Working with the MAYA-model:

Testing the building under different angles.

Some effects visible in the MAYA-model can not be explained. So at these particular points the simulation is not very realistic.

Making the model:

For making a difficult shape like the Zed building, we had to work with many sections which were the floor plans that we drew with AutoCAD. The floor plans formed a skeleton for the building. Afterwards we filled the space in between with an other material. The in between material is foam the rest is made of wood.

Working with the wind tunnel results:

We tested our building under different directions to see till what direction the hole stays effective. It’s not possible to get measurable data about the wind speed out of the test but the direction of the strings is telling us something about the wind direction and the presence or absence of turbulences.

0 degreesFront side of the

model

30 degreesBack side of the

model

60 degreesFront side of the

model

90 degreesWind from left side

Working with the wind tunnel results:

What can we read out of the photos of the test? By using graphical programs we can underline the density of the smoke. The differences of density can give us an idea about the wind speed. For example: the change of the direction of the curve tells us that the wind speed is changing over there, although it is not giving us measurable data.

Conclusions:

- The movement of air is more unpredictable than expected! This means that you should always check your design with a wind tunnel test.

- The simulation in MAYA has some truth in it, but while using it you should always be aware of the side-effects in the program which are no reality and for which we didn’t find the right settings to remove them. After all MAYA is just an animation program and not an simulation program. Major parameters:

viscosity (capability of air to follow the shape)friction (friction between the air molecules)damp (percentage of water in the air)

- The research started many discussions about wind in our group. Although the wind is not a common subject in our field it gave us the opportunity to introduce a new parameter to make architecture, especially considering the demand of energy in the near future.