As design teams work toward harnessing air flows around buildings, they are producing some intriguing structures. But just how viable is wind power as a source of on-site renewable energy?
By Peter Fairley

Wind power is the fastest-growing source of megawatts thanks to the jumbo-jet-sized turbines sprouting en masse worldwide. But it also has a significant presence in the city, where gusts regularly send umbrellas to landfills. Rather than considering it a nuisance, architects increasingly view urban wind as a renewable resource for on-building power generation.

Building-integrated wind power (BIWP)—wind turbines mounted on or incorporated within an occupied structure—may lack wind farms’ economies of scale. But like the leading source of on-building renewables—photovoltaics (PVs)—wind turbines offer some advantages in architectural applications. No roads get cut through wilderness to erect towers, and they deliver electricity without power lines and transmission losses. Wind turbines are also attractive to designers and clients looking to express a commitment to sustainability.

Such benefits provide potential for dramatic growth, says mechanical engineer Roger Frechette, principal in the Washington, D.C., office of Interface Engineering. “If there’s data showing that BIWP works and testimony that it’s a good thing to do, there will be an explosion,” he predicts…

Published in the April 2013 issue of Architectural Record Magazine. Read the whole story.