Comportment of wind flow of funnels incorporated in the 'House of the Winds' designed by Agnes Couvelas

摘要

The paper presents an experiment which intended to determine how architectural design can be enhanced over wind impact. It concerns the work done during the author's secondment from Shape Ltd based in Athens to Centre of Applied Mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, under the supervision of Professor Gregoire Allaire and architect Agnes Couvelas. The author's background at the moment of the secondment corresponded to master studies in Research by Design (School of Architecture, NTUA). Any work in the field of fluid flow simulation or shape optimization had not been carried out up to this time. The project was set under progress based on a primary approach of fluid flow mechanics and on approaching experimentally the softwares of fluid flow simulation. This perspective intended to examine how shape optimization over fluid flows can be reached without any previous experience on fluid flow simulation. The case studies examined were the funnels incorporated in the "House of the Winds" in Santorini, Greece, designed by Agnes Couvelas. The experimental method used was the wind flow simulation. The selected case studies were simulated in the environment of appropriate software, so as to examine their comportment and to optimize their shape.