Investigation on wind environments of surrounding open spaces around a public building

The purpose of this study is to highlight the effectiveness and necessity of the computational methods applications for architecture conceptual designs and improve the use of advanced simulation tools in urban planning. The results can provide the urban designers, planners and other decision makers with useful design information for assessing human wind comfort of the surrounding open spaces of public buildings in an urban area. Among different kinds of public buildings, museum architecture is of significant social value and importance for the augmentation of urban image. Using the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao for the case study, this investigation performed CFD simulations of the airflow over the museum to characterize the wind environments around the buildings. The predicted wind speed distributions were used to determine the wind comfort level of the featured spots around the museum for evaluating the suitability allowing visitors to sit or stand at the pedestrian plane for extended periods.