Zhenhui Zhang

Generative AI has advanced architectural and landscape layout generation, but regional gardens still lack formal spatial representations, controllable generation of intrinsic spatial prototypes, and domain-aligned evaluation methods. This study presents a theory-informed proof of concept for structured translation, conditional generation, and evaluation of Lingnan courtyard garden layouts. Based on classical Lingnan garden theory, 63 plans are encoded through five semantic layers: period style, spatial structure, organization mode, courtyard type, and constituent elements. The resulting multimodal dataset pairs normalized color-coded plans with structured prompts. A latent diffusion model fine-tuned using low-rank adaptation supports boundary-constrained generation. A multi-level evaluation framework combines spatial-prototype label ablation, expert relevance assessment, and element-proportion analysis. Empirical results show that structured spatial labels improve generation controllability: the structural-label hit rate reaches 78.8% (vs. 19.4% for element-only controls), and the organizational-label hit rate reaches 52.1% (vs. 13.6%). Structural control is stronger, whereas precise organizational relationships remain difficult to generate. This study establishes a traceable pathway from regional garden knowledge encoding to generative control and evaluation, provides an open and reusable dataset, and offers a methodological reference for the digital preservation of regional architectural and landscape heritage.

Buildings are under increasing pressure to address decarbonization and climate adaptation, which is pushing design practice from post hoc performance checks to performance-driven generative design (PDGD). This review maps the current state of PDGD in buildings and proposes an engineering-oriented framework that links research methods to deployable workflows. Using a PRISMA-based systematic search, we identify 153 core studies and code them along five dimensions: design objects and scales, objectives and metrics, algorithms and tools, workflows, and data and validation. The corpus shows a strong focus on facades, envelopes, and single-building massing, dominated by energy, daylight and thermal comfort objectives, and a widespread reliance on parametric platforms connected to performance simulation software with multi-objective optimization. From this evidence we extract three typical workflow routes: parametric evolutionary multi-objective optimization, surrogate or Bayesian optimization, and data- or model-driven generation. Persistent weaknesses include fragmented metric conventions, limited cross-case or field validation, and risks to reproducibility. In response, we propose a harmonized objective–metric system, an evidence pyramid for PDGD, and a reproducibility checklist with practical guidance, which together aim to make PDGD workflows more comparable, auditable, and transferable for design practice.

Aiming at the weakness of “two kinds of thinking; lack of integration” between Chinese culture and green technology in the field of urban and rural construction, as well as the high-quality construction needs of China’s new urbanization, using system thinking, genetic factors, and iteration theory, the components of genetic and variation factors and the integrative and iterative mechanisms of Chinese culture and green technology were studied. Chinese culture is rich in humanistic and green science and technology feelings of “reciprocity between heaven and mankind” and “matching nature”, believing that the ways of science and technology is inherently consistent with the ways of nature and man. Chinese culture endorses green science and technology with humanity and soul, and green science and technology promote the evolution and rebirth of Chinese culture. The genetic factors of Chinese culture and the variation factors of green science and technology constitute the inheritance and renewal system of integration, the unity of opposites, and the coordination of conflicts between them, deducing the integrated architectural design mechanism in which science and technology are “culturized” and culture is “technologized”. The iterative mechanism of mathematical operation is the logical thinking of architectural design in the repeated feedback process of cultural and scientific spatial graphics. It approximates the design thinking law of design conditions and requirements through a cyclic iterative scaling operation and can use computer-aided iterative design. According to the function, level, and structural relationship between Chinese culture space graphics and green science and technology space graphics, the iterative mechanism of collocation accumulation is the iterative design law of level accumulation and optimized collocation. There are two kinds of deduction paths, forward and reverse fusion, in the iteration–fusion design mechanism, which form the integration and iteration logic of mutual carrier and object.