Torre Anboto Dorrea

Torre Anboto Dorrea, a 119-meter-tall residential skyscraper located in the center of Bilbao, Spain, was designed by the team of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Luis Vidal + Arquitectos, with structural engineering by SOCOTEC.

General information

Date: 2018 - in Development

Collaborators: Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners y Luis Vidal + Arquitectos

Location: Bilbao, España

Photo property: Luis Vidal + Arquitectos

The building will consist of five basement levels and a tower with 32 floors, for a total of 166 cooperative apartments. The first three floors of the tower will be dedicated to commercial amenities, and the third floor will include community amenities.

Wind actions posed a challenge for structural engineering,, which had to ensure the comfort of pedestrians in the areas surrounding the project.To this end, CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) numerical simulations were carried out, which allowed to determine the relative qualitative comfort in each area of interest. Similarly, the comfort on the terraces of the tower's dwellings and in the open areas of the building's plinth is evaluated.

Talk to our experts

Antonio Sánchez

Cities & Building Madrid Director

STRUCTURAL CHALLENGE

reinforced concrete

The tower's structure is designed in reinforced concrete (RC). The concrete strength of the supports varies depending on the tower's height, being 30 MPa, 40 MPa, and 50 MPa. The slabs of the upper floors of the residential tower and the tertiary commercial basement are flat RC slabs. The foundation is supported directly on the rocky substrate. And the lateral stability of the building is provided by the inner RC vertical circulation core and the RC walls.

SOCOTEC, with its team of structural engineering specialists, used CFD aerodynamic simulations to evaluate the tower's behavior in extreme wind conditions.

MAIN ACTIVITIES

The aim of this study is to describe and justify the effects of wind and its impact on pedestrian comfort in the areas surrounding the Torre Garellano project in Bilbao. Additionally, comfort on the terraces of the tower's dwellings and in the open areas of the building's plinth is evaluated.

Comfort verification is performed using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) numerical simulations. These simulations allow for the determination of relative qualitative comfort in each previously indicated area of interest. The effects of wind on comfort and human safety are evaluated based on the different directions of wind incidence on the building. This is done through the simulation of wind action in eight different directions, based on CFD theories.

The geometry corresponding to the Torre Garellano was developed, taking as a reference the project provided by the Architecture team. The vertical slats of the facades were simplified while maintaining the porosity of each set. In this way, the wind flow is equivalent to what will occur in the terrace areas.

On three floors of the upper part of the building, the geometry has been modeled with a higher degree of detail, so that it has been possible to verify with precision how the different architectural elements that have been incorporated into the facades (slats, "screens" and opaque walls) modify the wind flow.

Torre Anboto Dorrea