Urban With Nature update

By Chase Master

In this blog 14 I wanted to talk more about what has been coming along with my thesis, Urban with Nature.  We are just having our second presentation and wanted to catch up with what has changed.  There have been a few things that I have worked on to try and increase the efficiency of the building.  I was focusing a lot on wind, the direction most prominent during the different seasons.  This was to find the best solution for wind turbines, natural ventilation, and effect of wind forces on building.

                  From finding out the most prominent winds during the winter season, I tried blocking this wind from the entrance to the building.  This also created a small entrance plaza that can use restaurants and small food court to block the wind and create a nice dining area for people to enjoy in front of the building.  This space also allows the cool summer breeze to come off of the river and up into the plaza to cool off people on a warm summer day.

                  Wind turbines has been an idea to bring in sustainable energy for the building to cut down on electricity bill, and also cut down on the building’s carbon foot print by not needing as much energy from power plants.  There has been a few areas to place wind turbines; the placement, type of turbine, wind direction, and building all effects the efficiency of the turbine and how long till the turbines will become cost efficient.  I have chosen two spots for wind tunneling effects on the building, as well as floors throughout the building to help increase the fire hour rating between occupancy zones through the building.  Since the surrounding buildings block winds in certain directions, they also help increase speed and funnel it in other directions; this is why I allowed space over the entrance to funnel wind from the West.  The top of the building would be taller than the surrounding buildings and would capture wind from the N-E and S-W winds.

Since the building will be a tall tower around 1,000 feet there was a need to increase sunlight into an atrium space of the building.  This atrium space would be filled with green walls and other vegetation to increase the air quality of the building and also control the ventilation, light, and for an interesting appearance when traveling up and down the building through the elevators.  Looking into a few things to help design a better atrium, researching termite tower I found more understating on how to try and allow more light down the atrium space.  To do this I found having the elevators the are located in the center of the atrium to only service upper level floors.  This pushed the egress of the lower floors out of atrium to increase the allowable space for light to distribute down the building.  The idea is to allow small entrances of light from the top and increase the size on the way down the building to allow the light to distribute down the atrium.  This also fit together with the flow of egress using this to shape the atrium spaces to draw the light further into the building.

                  This is just a few of the many different things that are changing in my thesis to try and achieve a high-rise mix used building that could generate more energy than it uses.  The idea of sustainable building to apply to a high rise building is to help reduce carbon emissions as well as help cut down on travel outside of building and thus reduce urban sprawl.