Rotating a skyscraper can double its cooling breeze
Urban designers are using wind-tunnel experiments to prove that a slight nudge to a building's footprint can flush out trapped heat and lower street temperatures.
Modern skyscrapers often act as giant radiators with their fans switched off, trapping pockets of stagnant air that bake the pavement below. In megacities like Hong Kong and Osaka, dark asphalt can soar to 60 degrees Celsius, radiating heat long after the sun sets. Research using scale models has revealed that rotating a tower by just 15 degrees can fundamentally change the local climate. This subtle shift prevents the building from becoming a windbreak, allowing it to instead funnel sea breezes deep into the urban core and double the ventilation speed at street level.