The Glòries Shopping Mall is located in the surroundings of the renovated Plaza de Les Glòries in Barcelona.

The shopping complex is made up of three independent buildings located in the central square. This open-air space provides users and customers with all kinds of leisure activities, restaurants and trends. The center is currently subject to a renovation project in which the basement level is intended to be reused as a food market, including catering kiosks. The central plaza and corridors make the center a partially open-air structure. This fact has caused inconveniences in the comfort of the users, given the air currents generated along the open spaces.

The purpose of the study is to obtain accurate results about the risk of drafts generation. Given the complexity of the building, a methodology based on different approaches to the problem has been followed. On the one hand, the wind impact on the shopping center as a whole (modeled as an open space) and, on the other hand, the wind currents generated in the basement (modeled as a closed space) are studied.

First, the study determined the variables and parameters related to user comfort, as well as the maximum acceptable thresholds related to wind affection. In a second phase, a statistical study was carried out to obtain the meteorological conditions affecting the shopping center environment (wind speed and direction).

Finally, a detailed study of the wind currents generated both outside and inside (basement) of the shopping center was carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools and the experience of the INES Ingenieros team.