Guoying Hou

With growing health awareness and an increasing preference for indoor exercise among the elderly, the demand for community indoor activity spaces is rising in the northern regions of China with cold winters and hot summers. While previous community studies have primarily focused on residential buildings, limited attention has been given to indoor activity spaces for the elderly. Moreover, field measurements expose critical thermal deficiencies in these spaces, where indoor temperatures remain substandard in both winter and summer, particularly falling substantially below the WHO health-based threshold (≥18 °C) in winter. Recognizing that transitional spaces are effective for improving indoor thermal conditions, this study explored their potential to enhance the indoor thermal environment, leading to targeted retrofitting schemes. The results showed that although additional transitional spaces effectively enhance the thermal performance, the strategies for winter and summer often conflict. Specifically, enclosed transitional spaces are effective for winter insulation but are prone to overheating in summer, whereas semi-outdoor configurations on the south and west facades are beneficial for summer heat prevention. Based on these findings, optimal retrofitting schemes were identified: for Site A, the existing interior corridor is transformed into a semi-outdoor transitional space; for Site B, an Adaptive Façade system is proposed for the south façade. Furthermore, despite the passive benefits, auxiliary HVAC systems remain necessary to maintain temperatures strictly within the comfort range during extreme weather. This study provides a scientific basis for research on transition spaces and offers a reference for retrofitting buildings in similar climatic regions.

This study proposes six morphological parameters based on fluid mechanics theory, constructs a database of 920 residential units in Tianjin, and applies CFD simulation to obtain the comfortable wind speed area ratio. Controlled variable experiments confirm a significant nonlinear relationship. Random Forest feature importance ranking identifies four highly sensitive parameters: unit height from ground, inlet-to-outlet area ratio, inlet angle, and partition wall density. Support Vector Regression, Multi-Layer Perceptron Regression, and Gradient Boosting Regression are employed for prediction modeling. Results show the Gradient Boosting Regression model outperforms others significantly: test set RMSE is reduced by 21.1% and 17.8% compared to SVR and MLPR respectively, MAE decreases by 22.4% and 20.8%, while R² increases by 21.7% and 69.7%. Validation with 30 unsampled units yields an average relative error of 8.16% (95% CI: 5.61%-11.38%), confirming reliability.

Global warming and urban expansion impose far-reaching, negative implications on the quality of the outdoor thermal environment in residential areas. Due to its potential for microclimate regulation and easy configuration with less site restrictions, the transitional space is an effective mitigation measure to transform existing outdoor spaces for thermal discomfort. The point of this article is to explore the optimum design parameters of the transitional space for increasing outdoor thermal comfort, with a focus on its orientation, aspect ratio (H/W), plan aspect ratio (L/W), and enclosure degree. The ENVI-met micro-meteorological model is adopted to visualize the environmental parameters after field measurement whereas the Ecotect is applied to validate the thermal performance under different design variants. The simulation results show that the thermal performance of geometry and orientation for the transitional space is seasonally discordant. On account of giving consideration to balance the double demands of solar shading in summer and solar gain in winter, a south-oriented transitional space with the windward side enclosure, length-width ratio of 2:1, and aspect ratio with 1.2 produces a greater thermal environment in Tianjin, China. Combined with the previous literature, south-oriented transitional spaces have a comparative advantage in balancing year-round thermal comfort for most cases; the deviation of the preferred orientation in the corresponding cities from the due south orientation is within 90° of a counterclockwise rotation. The lower aspect ratio (approximately below 1), deeper shape, and lower enclosure of the transitional spaces is appropriate for tropical and subtropical areas to avoid excessive sunshine; for temperate climates with hot summers and cold winters, such as in Tianjin, the reverse happens.

Contact with nature is believed to enhance mental health through the process of human psychological restoration. However, prolonged indoor living limits individuals’ exposure to nature, potentially hindering the timely alleviation of stress and fatigue induced by work. While biophilic design is recognized as a potential solution, its impact on the restoration process has not been extensively studied, particularly in relation to its various design patterns. Therefore, it is important to determine the restorative effects of different patterns of biophilic design and their combination in order to guide the practical application of biophilic design. In this study, the effects of two typical biophilic design patterns and their combination on attention restoration were measured using subjective scales, cognitive tasks, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in a simulated real workspace. The results suggest a significant enhancement in the restorative impact on cognitive performance and physiological benefits when combining two biophilic design patterns, while a single design pattern does not yield the same effect. These findings contribute to a better understanding and improvement of workspaces, enhancing users’ experience and well-being.

Indoor transitional space is a popular buffer space between buildings’ interior and exterior environments nowadays. Maintaining a comfortable indoor thermal comfort for transitional spaces often poses challenges to building designers and engineers. Some existing studies have already explored this topic, but they are mainly carried out in academic buildings. There are, however, still many other types of buildings containing transitional space, including entertainment buildings such as theaters and tourist centers. To provide useful information about people’s thermal requirements in the transitional space of entertainment buildings, this study has adopted both field measurement and questionnaire methods. Additionally, the same method has been repeated in an academic setting as well, so the results can be compared with existing studies. By comparing participants’ thermal requirements, it indicates that people’s thermal requirements are significantly impacted by operative temperature, which can give architects suggestions to improve the thermal environment in transitional spaces. In addition, in transitional spaces, people had a high tolerance for their thermal environment, especially participants in entertainment buildings, who showed a fairly high thermal satisfaction rate of 96% in winter and 94% in summer, far beyond the rates of 89% and 73% in academic buildings. Combined with the analysis of participants’ thermal preferences and the reason people stay in transitional spaces, it implies a close relationship between participants’ thermal comfort differences and the function that transitional spaces provide.