The Environmental Impacts of Snow and Wind on Public Spaces Causing from Tower Building Developments Using the Wind Tunnel

Urban Design Studies for Snow and Cold Cities

Abstract

In snow and cold cities, providing desirable pedestrian environment against snow and strong wind is one of the big issues on urban design in those cities. Author had the original and unique approaches comparing to the environmental assessment on the pedestrian spaces between Twin tower building and Complex tower building block using the wind tunnel simulation in downtown Sapporo. At the result, the Twin tower building block caused much snow scatter and snowdrift on the surrounding public spaces, especially on the pedestrian way. For protecting the pedestrian spaces against snow and strong wind, tower buildings should be designed at the low-level. It has happened to cause the negative impact of snow and wind for pedestrian environment.