Abstract
Nowadays building designers have to face up to new strategies to achieve the best sustainable building
designs. Well planned natural ventilation strategies in building design may contribute to a significant
reduction on buildings energy consumption. Natural ventilation strategies are conditioned to the particular
location of each building. To improve natural ventilation performance of a building, the analysis of
the influence of the location and the surrounding buildings on wind flow paths around the design building
is a must. New computational tools such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) are particularly suited
for modelling outdoor wind conditions and the influence on indoor air conditions prior to building
construction. Hence, reliable methodologies are necessary to support building design decisions related
to naturally ventilated buildings prior to construction.
This paper presents a case study for the selection of the best future building location attending to natural
ventilation behaviour inside the building, conditioned by different evolving environment. A validated
CFD model is used to represent outdoor and indoor spaces. The methodology explains how to qualitatively
and quantitatively analyze wind paths around and through a building to quantify the natural ventilation
performance. The best location, from two real possible solutions, is then selected.
