THE IMPACT OF BUILDING SHAPES ON NATURAL VENTILATION

Abstract

Good natural ventilation can help reduce ambient temperature on the façade of buildings, reduce energy consumption of the individual units, improve air quality, reduce mould growth on façades and increase the maintainability and life-cycle of the building. Buildings have been designed to mimic animals’ characteristics to enhance performance. The proposal of a hexagonal-shaped building was an inspiration from bee hives. This research aims to study the impact of how different shapes and the distances between buildings have on wind velocity. Wind tunnel test was conducted to assess the natural wind ventilation rate among common shapes like rectangular, square and rectangle with chamfered corners against hexagon. The tested wind parameters used is Singapore’s predominantly experienced wind directions and speeds. The readings are categorized into indoor, outdoor and void deck wind velocity. Results reveal that hexagon is the worst performing shape, spurred an additional testing to be conducted and it is shown that orientations of a building also has its impact on the wind velocity. From the experiment, it is proven that as the distance between blocks increases, wind flow into the community generally increases too. However, the channeling effect from the shapes is lost when the distance exceeds the threshold. The findings gave a good indication that distance, shape and orientation of buildings affects natural ventilation. Further studies can explore in depth how various combinations of orientation and shapes can help achieve desirable level of ventilation.