In the design procedure of the cooling tower the form-finding of the shell is the most important process, because the shape of the shell determines the sensitivity of dynamic behaviour of the whole tower against wind excitation. In engineering practice, geometric parameters of the shell are generally determined based on natural frequency analysis. 32 cooling tower shell geometries were selected through variation of the geometric parameters of an existing cooling tower shell. They were evaluated based on the first natural frequency. From the result three representative cooling towers are selected for the analysis of the structural behaviour by means of linear FE-method. As a result, a hyperbolic rotational shell with the small radius overall will yield the shell geometry with a higher first natural frequency and thus a wind-insensitive structure.