Abu Dhabi has started to build the world’s first zero-carbon, zero-waste car-free city. Masdar City is being constructed in the desert on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. The aims are to use only renewable energy sources, and to  eliminate  99% of the waste stream. Dr Stellios Plainiotis and PRP Architects designed the Sustainable Administration Facilities (SAF) Offices for 141 Staff on the zero carbon Masdar site so that the client, project managers and design team can co-ordinate the phased eight year  programme for the City. The future phases will provide accommodation for a further 600-800 staff.

The study has provided a quantitative assessment of the microclimate environment around  and between the elements of the proposed structure based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. In-house developed CFD solvers were applied which are based on the OpenFOAM C++ toolbox (OpenCFD, Imperial College UK). In this study the RNGkEpsilon RNG turbulence model for incompressible flows has been applied. The equations were discretised on a Cartesian computational grid and integrated with a finite-volume procedure. The surrounding area was modelled to a radius of around 250m from the centre of the site and a Logarithmic inflow velocity profile was applied.