Research and application of climate-responsive design of traditional vernacular houses in Chaoshan, China

Abstract

Chaoshan vernacular house is an important branch of Lingnan traditional houses in South China, with a long architectural history and excellent climate responsiveness to the hot-humid climate. The modern rural houses learn the traditional experiences mainly in the form but fail to inherit the climate-responsive design and wisdom of the traditional houses. This study took the widely distributed Xiashanhu houses in Chaoshan as the object, generated 128 Xishanhu parametric models by combinations of various parameters on design factors of building, opening, shading, construction, and street layout, and investigated the climate-responsive design techniques by using the parametric methods. The results show that the hall width, room width, cornice height, orientation, and wall construction are the key climate-responsive design factors oriented towards thermal performance of Xiashanhu houses. The optimized designs are: the smaller hall width (4.05m，4.32m，4.59m), the smaller room width (2.7m，2.97m，3.24m), the larger cornice height (4.92m，5.1m), the orientation ranged from 30° north by west to 30° north by east, and the brick and concrete wall. The rationality and validity were verified by applying the optimized climate-responsive designs to the re-construction of a new rural house. Compared to the original case, the thermal performance is significantly improved by 5.18-9.98%. A detailed discussion was also provided on considering the actual situation and needs of the modern buildings in the process of "using the past for the present." This study is believed to provide valuable references for the research and modern applications of climate-responsive designs of traditional vernacular houses. It also contributes to the preservation of architectural and cultural regional characters and the inheritance of architectural climate responsiveness in contemporary times.