Large-scale Building Integrated Wind Turbines in The Bahrain World Trade Center

Large-Scale Building Integrated Wind Turbines in the Bahrain World Trade Center

Manama, Bahrain accommodates The Bahrain World Trade Center (BWTC), which is a 240m (787ft) high twin commercial office tower complex. The towers are the epicenter of a masterplan to renew a 5* hotel and a shopping mall, which exist on a very famous area of Manama, with view the Arabian Gulf in the downtown central business site.

The long established Arabian“’Wind Towers’” influenced the form of the Bahrain World Trade Center buildings in the sense that the buildings take advantage of the undistracted serene breeze from the Gulf, giving a renewable source of energy for the new masterplan.

The towers are famous for their tremendous architecture that imitates an ancient Arabian“’wind tower’” design. However, the most important part that makes the BWTC so special and distinguishes from the others is its status as the first commercial building, which combines three large-scale wind turbines in its design. Additionally, the turbines are able to produce an important part of the building’s total electricity required each year.

How the Project Came About

Atkins” Chief Architect, Shaun Killa, pushed the idea for this modern design solution and the Client easily embraced the concept to show to the world that Bahrain is open to options, which can decrease the demand on fossil fuel energy and will push in a more sustainable direction, urban and building design in desert climates.

The integration of large scale wind turbines in a building structure is complex and needs to be taken seriously as the Client wishes to benefit from this project with the knowledge and experience collected from the people working their and then create teams, which will operating in a global manner.

As many architects around the world, so does the Atkins, crated team in the Middle East, which examines innovative design solutions promoting sustainability and have explored the use of integrated wind turbines on a number of previous projects. The Arabian Gulf with its most important characteristic, sea breeze, the wind climate contributes to the exploitation of wind energy and let designers to move away from the old traditional solutions and think about the unidirectional wind turbine as a choice, which are suitable for the integration of large-scale buildings.

Atkins made a research, which provides that the large-scale integration of wind turbines in projects mainly fails due to the extreme costs connected with the adjustment of the building’s design, and the development costs for special turbines which are also excessive. This project seems to have its basis of design, in the use of conventional technologies and the development of a built form, which would be pleasant to receive wind turbines. The premium on this project, with the wind turbines included, was less than 3.5% of the whole project’s value.

Atkins and a team full of world best technologists, with the advantage of a favorable wind climate and a design theory that keeps low turbine R&D / building costs, made a step further with the design and provide the main issues of:

• Producing technically viable solutions;
• Balancing energy yield / benefit with investment