Comfort-based Parametric Renovation Designs Of Guangzhou Qilou

Qilou,as a building type with near 100 years' history,has its unique historical and regional characteristics.The existing Qilou buildings in Guangzhou have been gradually declined due to the transform of economic model and the metabolism of architecture,and it is thus important to improve the built environment comfort,i.e.,space,light and thermal comfort,for better preserving and utilizing the existing Qilou buildings.The current preservation and modification codes are focused on the arcade street and building fa?ade rather than the indoors.There are many cases of indoor renovation of Qilou buildings abroad,but their applicability to Guangzhou is questionable.The majority of previous studies considered only a single factor or aspect of the built environment and studied the indoor and outdoor environments separately,which is not comprehensive or reasonable.The performance-oriented parameterization method has shown great potentials in the application of Qilou buildings' renovations.Taking the Qilou buildings in the first and second types of arcade streets in Guangzhou as the object,aiming at the common single-bay and double-bay types,this study investigated the current situation and problems of Qilou buildings,determined the suitable living mode and the typical plane size,and proposed the plane layout renovation strategies through field survey.The genotype and prototype of Qilou building floor plan were extracted based on spatial syntax,and four kinds of plane layouts were generated by using the renovation strategies for staircase and space layout.Taking the existing and to be micro-renovated Guangzhou Qilou as the object,under the conditions of basically retaining the original appearance of the buildings,this study set thermal and light comforts as the main optimization aims,established the parametric optimization design platform for Qilou buildings based on Rhinoceros & Grasshopper,and carried out the optimization designs for four key design parameters.The results showed that significant improvements on the main performance indicators were achieved,with the maximum increase of 328%,and a set of optimum schemes for diversified performance improvement could be provided,which took less than 230 seconds for the optimization of a single scheme.This work promotes the understandings of indoor thermal,wind and light environments in Qilou buildings,and provides effective ideas and tools for the renovation and design of Qilou buildings.