CODE : FLOW

New Office Building on Teheran-ro

period	2023.03–2023.06
location	447 Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
type	Third-Year Architectural Design Studio · Individual Work
status	Unbuilt Academic Proposal
scale	21 Storeys · Two Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine Floors

Living with the Wind

I have always liked the windmills in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. They draw water, grind grain, and become part of the village’s everyday life and landscape. Technology is not separated from architecture but operates as part of its spaces.

CODE : FLOW translates this relationship into a high-rise office on Teheran-ro. Rather than treating wind solely as an external environmental condition, the project uses it to organize the building’s mass and program.

Open floors for vertical-axis wind turbines are placed on the 14th and 19th floors of the 21-storey office. The mass is shaped to direct urban wind toward the turbines, while meeting rooms, community spaces, indoor gardens, and shared offices occupy the curves and voids produced in the process. Instead of attaching wind-power equipment to a completed building, the conditions of wind generation shape the building and its spaces together.

Reading the Southerly Winds of Teheran-ro

The Korea Meteorological Administration’s 1991–2020 climate normals show an annual average southerly wind speed of 2.4 m/s at the Gangnam station (400), measured at a height of 13 m. Calculating the increase in wind speed with altitude gives estimates of approximately 3.5 m/s at 60 m and 3.8 m/s at 84 m, the heights of the two turbine floors. These baseline values do not include local acceleration caused by surrounding buildings.

Teheran-ro is lined with buildings over 80 m tall. The initial design hypothesis was that southerly winds would accelerate through the narrowed passages of this urban canyon. Eddy3D simulations were used to examine the resulting flow.

The simulation model included buildings within 600 m to the south of the site and 300 m to the east, west, and north, with a southerly wind as the inlet condition. From left to right, the images show the simulated wind environments at 5 m, 15 m, 35 m, and 75 m above ground.

At lower levels, the surrounding buildings repeatedly interrupt and redirect the wind. As height increases, the effect of this shielding decreases and a faster, more continuous flow develops around the site. The turbines were therefore placed within open sections of the upper floors rather than near ground level.

Grasshopper and Eddy3D were connected to visualize wind direction and relative speed as vectors. These results informed the comparison of massing alternatives and the placement of the turbine floors.

Comparing Twelve Massing Alternatives

The turbine-floor openings and surrounding curved surfaces were constructed as a parametric model in Grasshopper. Twelve massing alternatives across three series were then simulated under the same southerly wind condition.

The comparison examined how much wind each opening captured, how the flow accelerated through the turbine passage, and how it exited behind the building. The final mass was selected by considering both the wind conditions at the turbine floors and the spatial organization of the offices rather than maximizing a single result.

Two Turbine Floors

Open turbine floors with a floor-to-floor height of 6 m are placed on the 14th and 19th floors, approximately 60 m and 84 m above ground. Each accommodates a vertical-axis wind turbine with a rotational diameter of 4.5 m. This is comparable in scale to a commercial 5 kW turbine with 5 m blades, providing a plausible dimensional basis for installation within the proposed floor height and upper-level wind conditions.

A vertical-axis turbine does not require a mechanism to turn the rotor toward the wind, making it suitable for changing urban wind directions. The curved spaces around the turbines connect to meeting rooms, community spaces, indoor gardens, and shared offices. Power generation was not separately calculated.

Stronger Above, Gentler Below

The turbine floors and the pedestrian ground level require different wind conditions. At the turbine floors, wind entering through the openings accelerates between the narrowing curved surfaces. The wind-speed heatmaps show faster flow through the turbine passages and a broader acceleration zone on the higher 19th floor.

At ground level, a sunken plaza and windbreak walls disperse wind approaching the entrance. The building concentrates the wind above and directs it toward the turbines, while dividing the same flow below to reduce direct exposure within pedestrian spaces.

Two Core Types

The turbine floor demanded a core layout that allows for expansive space, contrasting with the core shape needed for a highly efficient office plan. To satisfy both requirements at once, the relationship between the core and the workspace was categorized into two separate types.

Type A secures the open spaces connected to the turbines, while Type B separates the general office areas. By alternating the two typologies according to the programmatic requirements of each floor, the necessary spaces were accommodated within a single vertical framework.

Testing the Structural Concept with Models

Because the large turbine openings interrupt the continuous structure of the high-rise, the framing and load paths around these floors were examined separately. Karamba3D was used to visualize the deformation of the overall structure, followed by a 1:100 model of the complete building and a 1:50 model of a turbine-floor section.

Pressing and twisting the models helped compare the relative behaviour of the cores and the frames surrounding the turbine floors. These models did not verify structural safety; they were structural studies used to understand the load paths around the large voids and the concept of lateral stability.

Concept Models

The First Turn

CODE : FLOW was my first experience of computation actively changing a design. I developed the mass in Grasshopper and adjusted its form in response to the wind flow shown in Eddy3D.

At the time, I compared the simulation results visually rather than connecting their numerical values to the design variables, which limited how many alternatives I could explore. This experience led me to use simulation values for form generation and optimization in later projects. The cycle of designing, running, and revising also began here. CODE : FLOW was its first turn.