Digital-age Urbanism with Eddy3D for Grasshopper

Abstract

The changing climate is a trigger for architects to reconsider the conventional design approach and possibly enrich it with novel approaches brought by the digital age. Sun analysis for urban planning with wind analysis too, proves inevitable for creating comfortable public spaces and built environment in general. When incorporating wind analysis into the process of architectural/urban design, several crucial pre-requisites determine the use of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations: (1) the demand from the client, (2) the time-space needed for the investigations, (3) the powerful enough hardware, and (4) software that enables a fast, user-friendly interface for parametric investigations. Among the benefits of investigating wind speed and flowlines in the digital environment is the possibility to compare design alternatives very quickly and with the same boundary conditions. Moreover, the popular algorithmic software Grasshopper currently enables wind investigation of the geometry directly in the modeling environment without the need to export the file to a standalone CFD software. This way, multiple design options can be investigated once the parametric geometry is prepared, and the digital wind tunnel is set.