Wind simulations for studying ecological influences of existing Guggenheim museum Bilbao on the urban surroundings

Bilbao is a densely populated city located on the Adriatic coastline in northern Spain. After the old port was relocated further downstream, some famous architects have been invited to develop the new city centre on the waterfront since 1993. Especially the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, designed by Frank O. Gehry, a world famous architect and winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, had been praised "the greatest building of our time" standing in the southern bank of river Nervión since 1997. The museum has attracted attentions all over the world by its glittering titanium-clad walls and the randomness of the curves for gathering the light since its completion. Contrasted with psychological and visual stimuli to the people, this research presents a viewpoint from local urban pattern with the wind environment analysis. As a new approach, we performed the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-based simulations to obtain numerical predictions of flow field for examining the influence of the Guggenheim Museum on the surroundings. The simulated results indicated a significant impact of the standing Guggenheim Museum on the wind distribution and the ecological characteristics of the urban surroundings in Bilbao.