The twin tower building in Manama was designed by architects Atkins & Partners Overseas.
The company’s head of architecture Shaun Killa told ITP Business the challenge of attempting such a design was understanding the nature of horizontal axis wind turbines.
“This then had to be combined with a building form that created the most favourable wind patterns, and at the same time was efficient and economically driven,” Killa said.
Because it is situated next to the Arabian Gulf, the WTC receives a constant breeze perpendicular to its sea-facing side.
The conditions allowed the designers to incorporate three 29m-diameter horizontal axis turbines into the 240m-high triangular shaped towers.
Killa said undertaking a project of this scale was compounded by the fact there was no precedent to follow.
“When we embarked upon this design, there was no authority that we could speak to, and when we started talking to turbine manufacturers, at some points they simply couldn’t answer our questions,” he told ITP Business.
Research by Atkins found the large-scale integration of turbines into buildings mostly failed due to the excessive cost, which could be as much as 30% of the project cost.
“The success of the Bahrain WTC is that it incorporates standard type-tested wind turbines which have been adapted to this application with fairly minimal modifications, helping to reduce the cost of integrating them with the building,” Killa said.
The cost of incorporating the wind turbines into the centre was less than 5% of the project value.
The two towers are designed to allow them to funnel onshore wind between them and create negative pressure behind, in order to accelerate the wind velocity.
Atkins predicts energy production from the turbines will be between 1100 and 1300MW hours per year, and amount to 11-15% of the building’s electrical consumption.
The innovative wind energy source is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the building’s energy use by around 55 tonnes of carbon equivalent a year.
