Research material is commonly supported by paintings. However, if paintings are viewed as the representation and re-composition of architecture, we can focus on the pattern of the selection, referencing, and re-composition of the form elements. This study applies semiotic theories to architectural studies of the Dunhuang frescoes. It extracts and analyzes the symbols (form elements) in the architectural images of the Northern Dynasties. It also interprets the underlying rules of the selection, adoption, and re-composition of the symbols by component analysis. The presence of commonly adopted components, as well as the semiotic structural system under which the components with distinctive characters can be continuously broken down, endow the seemingly simple Northern Dynasties architectural images with both unity and variation.

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The tectonic idea has frequently been referred to when discussing construction philosophy, and presenting the properties of materials has been considered to be the authentic tectonic expression. In contrast, atectonics has been considered the negation of tectonic expression, which would not only disturb observers′ understanding of architectural construction, but also be the converse of the conventionally authentic philosophy. However, according to Gottfried Semper, the surface cladding is superior to the tectonic practice, and this has created a distance from the conventions. Moreover, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and their colleagues, as well as Matsunosuke Moriyama, have provided this research with two appropriate examples through which to re-examine the consideration of atectonic expression. This paper will conclude two approaches to re-thinking atectonics: the symbolic expression and the ′ghost architecture′ of the contexts. This paper will reveal a different authenticity which can be achieved from atectonic expression, namely the representation of the symbols and the surrounding environment.

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This paper analyzes how the city government-led project to promote Seoul as the world design capital has resulted in the construction of spectacular architecture, and how such a vision of Seoul is resisted by various actors. Construction of the Dongdaemun Design Park and Plaza, designed by Zaha Hadid, is an effort to rebrand Seoul′s image from that of an industrial city relying on manufacturing to that of a post-industrial city emphasizing service industries. Although Hadid′s design, which integrates the historical wall from the Chosun dynasty, was deemed respectful of Korean heritage by the city government, many sports fans, street vendors, and artists have criticized it as representing a continuation of the developmentalist project. By highlighting the controversial design campaign of the FF group, this paper illustrates how the technique of détournement, proposed by Guy Debord, the founding member of the Situationist International, can be used to undermine the spectacle generated by the star architect′s design. Despite the tendency of dramatic visual statements to stifle the struggles of everyday life, the case of Dongdaemun shows that the potential for critical design still exists.

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An historical irrigation landscape with its irrigation facilities, water engineering works, and irrigated farms, could be considered a cultural landscape that records the process of interactions between the people and land, and the resulting influences on the environment. Dynamic and diverse conservation approaches may be applied in a cultural landscape, due to various features, characters and values of the elements within it. Using the strategy of sustainability, concepts of preservation of historical testimonies and maintenance of the operational and integral instruments, a cultural landscape may be conserved through the approaches of monument-based conservation, operation-based conservation, sustainable management and planning. The Jianan Irrigation System, an historical irrigation cultural landscape in southern Taiwan, is illustrated to describe these arguments.

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This research seeks to evaluate the experience of nature in the architectural instruments as created by Le Corbusier, in terms of the phenomenology of corporal experience. The architecture of Le Corbusier is active in viewing the spectacular landscape of nature through frontal localization, windows, ramps, and roof gardens. His architecture has the attitude of separating from earth and opposing and viewing nature as an autonomic machine. The nature experience of Le Corbusier is largely divided into seeing from on high and seeing while walking. Considering the senses of the body and the aspects of movement responding to each situation, the experience of seeing and contemplating nature on a large scale has an abstract quality. Seeing nature as an object from afar basically limits the experience in the information of the senses and the abstraction of nature. For the concrete experience of nature, what is needed is the idea that the body takes part in the diverse sensorial worlds and is simultaneously taken in by the situation. This research also aims to reconsider the qualities of experiences of nature, based on the modernity characterized by the separation of human from nature and sprit from body.

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Kings Road House has become an icon of early modern architecture. This innovative house, described by Schindler as ″a cooperative dwelling for two young couples″, was considered by Reyner Banham to be a totally new beginning. Although many papers devoted to the house have been published, no research has been conducted into its relationship with the interpreted characteristics of Japanese architecture or the sources from which Schindler may have obtained information about Japan in 1921 without ever having traveled to the country. In this paper, the authors hope to clarify the matter and shed new light on some of the elements of Japanese architecture found in Schindler′s House, including the aspects of sun and light control. This was done through research into original documents in archives in California and with the help of contemporary simulation tools, duly tested by means of on-site measurements. The results show clear similarities between key concepts of Schindler House and descriptions of Japanese architecture. Some of these concepts have been considered essential elements of Schindler architecture and were subsequently reproduced in other houses in California.

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This paper aims to clarify the influence of Hannes Meyer′s concept of ″psychological effects″ on socialist cities and architecture in the Soviet Union by analyzing two 1930s projects: Meyer′s plan for the development and reconstruction of Greater Moscow, and the Bauhaus Brigade′s design proposal for the Palace of the Soviets competition. Meyer′s design, especially his idea to place skyscrapers in a widened Red Square, was intended to psychologically enhance the effect of mass demonstrations. Similarly, the Bauhaus Brigade′s design employed technologically augmented flexible spaces and wide swaths of greenery to accommodate mass demonstrations. The objective of ″psychological effects″ was that the Soviet population would be conscious of constructing a new society in the Soviet Union. These concepts were heavily influenced by Meyer′s early work in Weimar Germany, when he concluded that ″psychological effects″ elevated functionalism to a new level. A review of original design plans and unpublished documents yielded direct parallels with socialist realist architecture of the time, such as the People′s Commissariat of Heavy Industry and the general redesign of Moscow, suggesting the ideas of Meyer and the Bauhaus Brigade strongly influenced the fundamentals of 1930s monumental architecture in the Soviet Union.

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The purpose of this study is to develop a parametric design methodology that combines parametric design with thermal analysis. This new approach suggests that a form emerges from a performance based analysis. The result of the study is a parametric louver design system, which optimizes a louver form based on its direct solar radiation control performance. The system is composed of three parts: the analysis part, parametric design part, and optimization part. Each part functions interactively to produce an output. The output is the best performing louver form for the given site from the aspect of its yearly direct solar radiation control performance. The study applies the suggested design system to a case study, which is a virtual curtain wall office building in Seoul, Korea. The system produces the best performing louver form for each of the building′s two main facades. The study compares the thermal performance of the best performing louver design with a commonly used louver design using a different software, Ecotect Analysis 2011. The Ecotect′s thermal analysis confirms that the suggested louver forms perform better, reducing the building′s heating and cooling loads.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of different types of apartment unit plan on symptoms related to SBS. The apartment floor plans covered in this study are divided between two types: plans with and without cross ventilation. The major methodology for the study was a survey that used an array of question items selected from preceding research related to SBS and preliminary study. The survey was conducted in August and September 2012 (summer), a season reported to show a higher rate of occurrence of SBS, and surveyed a total of 120 households, 60 households for each apartment plan type. The conclusion drawn from the findings of the survey is as follows. First, SBS symptoms were reported to occur from one and a half to two times more frequently among occupants of apartments without a cross ventilation floor plan than among those with a floor plan allowing cross ventilation. Second, narrow and enclosed spaces with built-in closets, such as entryways or bathrooms, were found to be more commonly associated with SBS symptoms. Even the living room was cited as among the areas associated with SBS symptoms by occupants of apartments with a floor plan lacking cross ventilation. Third, a majority of occupants were found to use ″bake-out″ to reduce the effects of SBS, but their satisfaction with this measure was low. As for ″natural ventilation,″ the level of satisfaction was reported to be higher among the occupants of cross ventilation plan apartments, but relatively lower among their counterparts.

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The focus of traditional market revitalization policy is shifting from physical improvement projects to social regeneration efforts designed to stimulate the declining traditional market by means of cultural instruments in Korea. Given this trend, this study analyzes what kind of cultural promotion activities sponsored by public assistance influence social capital formation on the traditional market. The causative factors derived from cultural promotion activities are awareness transition activities, grassroots expansion activities, and empowerment activities, In comparison to cultural promotion activities, the causative factors derived from routine merchant activities are routine interactions, economic interactions, fellowship activities, and autonomous activities. The influence relationship model designed to denote the resultant factors consists of reliability, participation, network, and sense of community.
The study results revealed that cultural promotion activities and routine activities had a positive impact on social capital formation. In the case of cultural promotion activities, awareness transition activities and grassroots expansion activities were found to largely exercise a positive influence, whereas empowerment activities showed a negative influence. In addition, in the case of routine merchant activities, fellowship activities and autonomous activities, which include communal characteristics, were shown to exercise a more intense influence on social capital formation.

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Current predictive models for influenza spread are based on an annual person trip data, which are difficult to interpret for a specific urban population. The present study tested whether total floor area according to building use (TFA) may constitute a more reliable alternative to derive a formula predicting the annual infection rate. This model was tested in 23 Tokyo wards based on spatial and epidemic data compiled from 2001 to 2011 using multiple regression analysis with TFA or person trip data as an explanatory variable and infection rate as objective variable. Furthermore, the annual epidemic patterns predicted by this model were validated against the influenza epidemic level maps available for 2004–2011. Results show that TFA is as effective as person trip data for the prediction of infection rate. A relationship was established between TFA and the number of infected individuals. The TFA model identified government offices and educational facilities as a major source of influenza spread to adjacent wards. The wards located away from the city center showed a higher infection rate than downtown Tokyo, despite their lower population density. In conclusion, this study suggests that TFA constitutes a more adequate variable for predictive models of influenza spread within an urban population.

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Alternative workplace arrangements (AWAs), enabled by information and communication technology, where employees do not have permanently assigned workspaces on company premises, are likely to continue in the future. However, facility managers have limited tools to select from among the possible choices in which the AWA type is more appropriate considering their organizations′ business reasons for adoption and the current readiness condition. The aim of this research is to provide facility managers with an understanding of the decision process for AWA adoption and to develop a decision support model to allow them to select an appropriate AWA type and determine the anticipated satisfaction level. Using the artificial neural network (ANN) method and the case-based reasoning (CBR) technique, the authors have developed and validated a decision model to suggest the most appropriate AWA type given the organization′s objectives and the current readiness levels. The proposed approach is tested by evaluating 64 real adoption cases from 19 large high-tech companies. The findings reveal that the ANN-based decision model can provide an accurate prediction of the actual values and the support decisions of the facility managers responsible for developing workplace strategies to meet the organization′s current and future needs.

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The present study empirically analyzed the capital structure determinants of 43 listed construction companies in Korea from 2000 to 2010 using multiple regression analysis. Specifically, the empirical analysis focused on changes in the coefficients of the determinants according to the leverage ratio quantiles of the examined construction companies. The empirical analysis found company and non-debt tax shield size to be positively related with leverage among construction companies, whereas profitability, growth, asset tangibility, and liquidity were found to be negatively related with leverage. The major results of the study are: 1) construction companies followed the static tradeoff theory in relation to size; 2) non-debt tax shields had quite limited effects on the capital-structure-related decisions of construction companies; 3) construction companies were found to follow the pecking order theory in relation to profitability; and 4) asset tangibility was estimated to have the opposite sign to that found in previous studies. These results were attributed to the characteristics of the construction business.

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We tracked scanning paths to determine what visual activities subjects performed while observing the lobby of a public space. Extracting the observation pattern and establishing the scanning attributes in 10-second blocks enabled us to evaluate the characteristics of continuous space search. First, we analyzed scanpath characteristics in six time frame ranges and found that more scanpaths overlapped when the time frame was longer, and they were too fragmentary when it was shorter. Consequently, 10 seconds was determined to be the best time frame for analyzing scanning features. Second, during 2 minutes of observation, subjects used a combination of mixed scanning (41.3-seconds), horizontal scanning (35.4 -seconds), and circular scanning (28.8-seconds). Subjects focused on one spot for only 12.1 seconds, and spent most of the observation time engaged in space search. Third, mixed scanning made up 45%–50% of all the scanning patterns, indicating that a significant proportion of space search was accomplished through mixed scanning. Fourth, horizontal search was prominent during the early stage of observation, indicating that subjects tended to use horizontal search at the initial stage of space observation. Fifth, subjects initially searched the space horizontally and then repeated mixed search in 20–30 second intervals after circular search.

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In the last several decades, the residential apartment housing market in South Korea was led by housing providers, not by consumers, which led to a seller′s market. However, since the mid-2000s, the market has experienced a rapid transition to a buyer′s market because of an oversupply of apartment units. This implies that housing providers require new strategies for appropriately responding to the rapidly changing market environment. We conducted a survey of 799 occupants of new apartment units to assess their evaluation of 13 pre-classified apartment complex components. In addition, we conducted a similar survey of 34 customer satisfaction (CS) experts representing housing providers. The results of a comparative analysis of consumers and CS experts indicate significant differences in their evaluation of each component. The results have important implications for housing providers interested in developing effective housing supply strategies and for improving design quality.

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There is a very close relationship between the housing market and macroeconomic fluctuations. Specifically, the dynamics between the various factors of the housing market are changed by macroeconomic fluctuations. The housing market can be divided into the rental market and the transaction market. Different price movements in each market appear before and after macroeconomic fluctuations. The purpose of this study is to compare the dynamics in the Korean housing market before and after macroeconomic fluctuations based on the FDW model. Data for this study came from the apartment market in Seoul, which is a representative housing market for Korea. The timeframe of serial data are set as; period A from January 2001 to December 2006, which preceded the financial crisis, and period B from January 2007 to July 2011, which followed it. The database of Statistics Korea (KOSTAT) was used in collecting the serial data. Empirical analysis was carried out using the selected variables based on the FDW model and the results were compared for each period and each market. A substantial number of different characteristics were identified. It is believed that these results will carry significant meaning from various perspectives, including the political and business points-of-view.

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The identification of significant factors affecting the behaviors of customers and occupants of physical environments and assessing their importance are imperative for effective architectural planning and design. This study investigated the effects of servicescape on perceived service quality and behavioral intention. The four main factors of servicescape selected for this study were attractiveness, cleanliness, layout, and comfort; the two perception indicators were service quality and satisfaction; and the behavioral outcome measures were loyalty and public service facility revisit intentions. A total of 594 questionnaires were collected from the users of five public service facilities located in Seoul, Korea. SPSS 18 and Lisrel 8.54, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to test hypotheses.
The results revealed that cleanliness had a significantly direct impact on users′ satisfaction and an indirect impact on loyalty and reuse in public service facilities. Easy layout (easy access) was also found to be an essential factor for service quality and satisfaction. The findings also support the positive effects of comfort on perceived service quality and satisfaction. Although attractiveness was expected to be an indicator, the results failed to support a relationship between attractiveness and service quality or satisfaction.

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Because the energy consumption of the Korean construction industry accounts for 18.8% of Korea′s entire energy consumption, the construction industry has considered a variety of techniques for enabling energy savings on construction projects. In particular, the construction of multi-family housing projects in Korea is one of the key areas where efforts can be made to reduce energy consumption. Consequently, many Korean construction companies are investing considerable effort toward developing advanced green performance techniques, including heating, cooling and electricity. This study identified the various techniques available to achieve green performance in multi-family housing projects, and surveyed the expert′s perceptions of the techniques identified to suggest established, emerging, and opportunity green techniques to the Korean construction industry. This paper is expected to provide guidelines for developing technologies that can successfully deliver future energy-efficient multi-family housing projects in Korea.

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Taking Taipei′s Songshan Airport as an example, this study uses a Post-Occupancy Evaluation to understand the different seating needs of passengers and what they hope for to ameliorate problems encountered while waiting for boarding. Most passengers occupy the first row of seats or seats near aisles, which have enough space for their luggage. Passengers prefer a space that allows them to chat with other travellers and emphasizes their need for private space while waiting. They prefer seats with good outlooks, from which they can look around to their surroundings and check their flight information. A symmetrical arrangement of seats allows a smooth traffic flow. The traffic flow in waiting areas must not be obstructed by luggage, so that the seats can be more efficiently used. Seats with tables make eating food and drinking more convenient. Seats that allow passengers space for their luggage are also preferred. These findings are relevant to the design of airport seating.

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Project process planning is implemented based mainly on the experience of engineers, which can lead to critical cost overruns and delays. This suggests a need for precise planning based on reliable data to prevent serious problems in project management. Accurately predicting productivity is one of the most important issues in process planning. In this regard, simulation methodology is considered to be an effective tool for predicting productivity. However, it is limited in terms of applications to actual sites due to modeling and coding difficulties. Although many researchers have developed various methodologies for addressing such difficulties, no study has focused on developing an optimized model for site personnel. We analyze unit cost and productivity by using a simulation technique. In addition, we standardize data by using statistical methods, and develop a database prototype. In this way, we highlight appropriate analytic and predictable methods for the construction field. In addition, the proposed statistical analysis provides objective insights into experimental construction data.

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Using an ongoing design project—China′s Meishan Culture Park in Hunan Province—as a case study, this paper examines a four-dimensional design approach that incorporates time features into conventional three-dimensional space design. Time features are incorporated through the use of various design elements that constantly change through time. Thus, both the first and final images of the landscape are unpredictable, and the landscape is part of a dynamic process. The key feature of such a design is the transformation of a static landscape into a dynamic one that is authentic, historic and diachronic.

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When discussing sustainable development at city level, local governance is one of the most important factors and cannot be excluded among the many important aspects; economics, technology, and environment, as urban sustainability involves multilevel governance and complex political features. Using the theory of contextualism founded by S. Pepper, this paper firstly considers the meaning of ′sustainable′ and critiques the use and wider implications of the word ′sustainable′ throughout as envisaged by contextualism. While highlighting how urban sustainability can be assessed, this paper critiques specific methods of assessing urban sustainability. It attempts to link the critical philosophy of contextualism to the concept of local governance in terms of urban management. It then looks into the contradictory aspect of these principles using the city of Curitiba as an example. However the model of the city of Curitiba proved difficult to assess, as there are far too many factors to consider. It is felt that this case study is of use as a demonstration of the potential importance of the contextual urban model. We believe it unlikely that this will be solved in the near future, but it is important to look at it and a solution to this contradiction should be aimed for.

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With increasing global interest in creating healthy communities, research in urban planning and public health has been progressing on this topic. While discussions and researches in South Korea are beginning to occur at the urban planning level, most studies hitherto have centered round public health, with very few considerations of built environments. This paper aims to explore how individual characteristics and built environments in the community are correlated to individual health levels in Incheon, Korea. This study establishes a conceptual model to examine the relationship between public health, individual attributes, and built environments and analyze the effect of built environments on health level using a multilevel regression model. The results reveal that, with the exception of some variables, the correlations between individual health levels and built environment variables are statistically significant.

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The main drawback of using the linear programming (LP) bounds method for computing bounds on the reliability of a general system is that the size of the LP problem increases exponentially with the number of components. Although a multi-scale approach has been proposed to deal with a system with a large number of components, the selection of the subsystems in a multi-scale approach could still be difficult or impossible for a general system. In order to overcome the main drawback of the LP bounds method, the relaxed linear programming (RLP) bounds method was developed for a pure series system and pure parallel system; it provides results comparable to that of the LP bounds method. This paper extends the applicability of linear programming by presenting an approach to handle a general system by decomposing the entire system into subsystems based on failure modes. The proposed approach relies on individual component state probabilities and joint probabilities of the states of a small number of components, and it can provide the bounds for the failure probability of large systems, especially when other methods are not applicable. This paper also presents a strategy for decreasing the number of constraints in the RLP bounds method.

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In the construction industry today, there is a need for improved testing procedures capable of accurately predicting the susceptibility of aggregates to the alkali-silica reaction (ASR). These new procedures will permit the use of some aggregates that have been excluded in the past on the basis of being classified as reactive. Effective mitigation methods will permit the economic use of reactive aggregates that would normally be excluded. Increasing the quality of the aggregate sources the target of this research, the results of which will help manufacturers sell more products while cutting prices for consumers. By modifying ASTM C1260, we expanded the length of testing from 14 to 56 days, changed the water content of the mixing proportion with the water to cement ratio controlled at 0.47, the molarity of the curing solution, and used different interpretation methods, specifically Avrami′s model and the polynomial fit procedures. If the results of this research enabled even 25 percent of these materials to be used, the increased volume available for use would increase substantially.

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George Town, Penang has the largest collection of shophouses constructed before the Second World War (henceforth pre-war shophouses) in Southeast Asia. The recent increase of shophouse renovations has provided an opportunity to study the building construction, which has not been understood and recorded comprehensively. This paper studies the building construction of shophouses and its transition through observation on eight renovation sites and interviews. The building construction of shophouses was found to exhibit mainly Indian¹, Chinese¹ and British influence but uses mostly locally available materials. Indian and Chinese influence is stronger in the 19th century shophouses, while western influence is more evident in those of the early 20th century, earmarking the introduction of British policy and western technologies at the turn of the century. However the trend is often blurred by post construction alterations. Although there is a shift to using traditional building materials during recent renovations, changes due to circumstances such as client′s preferences together with heavy use of recycled materials mark another turning point in building construction transition. Proper documentation of renovation processes is crucial for future references and comprehensive understanding of the building construction and its development throughout history.

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Reinforced concrete (RC) coupling beams are essential structural elements for their ability to reduce the bending moment of coupled walls as well as their capacity to dissipate energy. Deformation capacity of RC coupling beams is influenced by the relative depth coefficient of compression zone, the span-depth ratio, and the concrete confinement. In this paper, the relationship of the relative depth coefficient of compression zone ξ, the span-depth ratio χ, the confining reinforcement characteristic value λ_νb, and the ultimate plastic hinge rotation θ^u_plb is established firstly. Then, the λ_νb - ξξ- χ - θ^u_plb relationship is verified by the 48 RC coupling beam experiments conducted by 8 research institutions. Based on the relationship, the performance-based seismic design (PBSD) method for RC coupling beams is proposed. According to the method, the transverse reinforcement can be assessed if the plastic hinge rotation θ and the damage index D_b are predetermined, which forms an important part of the PBSD method for RC coupling beams.

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Deformation capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls is mainly influenced by concrete confinement at the boundaries of shear walls, axial force ratio and wall aspect ratio. In this paper, the relationship among the wall boundary transverse reinforcement characteristic value λ_vw, the axial force ratio n, the wall aspect ratio r and the ultimate displacement Δ_uw is established first. Then, the relationship between λ_vw −−n −−r −−Δ_uw is verified against the results of 71 RC shear wall experiments conducted by eight different research institutions. Based on the established relationship, the performance-based seismic design (PBSD) method for RC shear walls is proposed. According to the method presented in the paper, the amount of transverse reinforcement at wall boundaries could be determined, if the inter-storey drift demand θ and the damage index D_w are predetermined. The use of the proposed PBSD method, which may guide future RC shear wall design, is illustrated in detail by an example.

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Carbonation has been considered as a deterioration factor in concrete because it reduces the pH of concrete from between 12.6 and 13.5 to about 9. However, carbonation can have some positive consequences. Because CO₃ occupies a greater volume than Ca(OH)₂, which it replaces, the porosity of carbonated concrete decreases. On the other hand, carbonation turns bound chloride into free chloride. The results verify that carbonation has some beneficial effects by enhancing compressive strength and volume safety and reducing permeability and chloride ion penetration. In general, carbonation enhances concrete performance.

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The greatest challenges for straw bale construction in Japan are moisture and straw′s susceptibility to microbial decay. In order to mitigate excessive moisture, some straw bale architects and builders in Japan have utilized passive ventilation. This paper examines the influence of passive ventilation on the interstitial hygrothermal environment of the straw bale walls of a building in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, known as Furyu. Furyu′s walls consist of straw bales surrounding a conventional timber frame. Underneath the bale wall is a ventilation chamber vented to the outside. The bale wall is exposed to the ventilation chamber below and air passes freely between the outside and sub-wall ventilation chamber. Twenty-three temperature and relative humidity sensors monitor the hygrothermal environment of Furyu. The study found that the relative humidity of the ventilation cavity is strongly influenced by the outdoor environment. The lower bale wall is in turn strongly influenced by the ventilation cavity. The results suggest that passive ventilation is not an effective means to control interstitial moisture in straw bale walls. Rather, passive ventilation appears to be a source of interstitial moisture during warm summer months.

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In this study, the coupled simulation of CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and network model of building energy (heat) and airflow simulation is reviewed. The network model is a tool to describe the whole and macroscopic characteristics of heat or airflow transport in buildings, where heat flow or airflow is modeled as a network of one-dimensional flow elements. It can be conducted with comparatively less computational cost. The temperature or contaminant concentration of the room air is often not uniform but spatially distributed in a room, when the mixing efficiency of room airflow is not high enough, or when sources and respective sinks of heat or contaminant are located comparatively apart in a room. The CFD is a tool to describe these distribution characteristics precisely. It requires considerable computation amount and computational time. It is not light or simple to do compared with the network model computation. If one wants to analyze the whole and macroscopic characteristics of heat or flow transports in buildings including the distribution features of temperature or contaminant in a certain room, or if one wants to analyze the room airflow with the consideration of whole building heat and flow transport, the two simulations should be done simultaneously. In other words, they should be solved with the coupled manner. There are many methods or ways for coupling the two simulations. In this review, the authors divided the coupled simulations into two groups. One is the group of which the CFD analysis is the main objective, while the other is the group with network simulation as the main objective. In the latter case, even the major objective is obtained from the results of the network simulation, and the full coupling CFD and network simulation requires an enormous amount of computation and time compared with the single network simulation. The full coupling is practically absurd and is sometimes impossible because of its enormous computation amount. Further simplification of the coupling with CFD has to be pursued. The authors have reviewed the papers published in the recent 10 years on this topic and classified relevant works into the two categories mentioned above.

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Terminal boxes are critical components of variable air volume (VAV) systems. The minimum airflow of terminal boxes is a key factor for comfort, indoor air quality (IAQ) and energy cost. If the minimum airflow is higher than needed, terminal boxes will have significantly more simultaneous heating and cooling, and air-handling units (AHUs) will consume more fan power. Buildings will have IAQ problems if the minimum airflow is less than required. A dynamic building simulation and field experiment were carried out to evaluate the impact of minimum airflow on the energy consumption of single duct VAV terminal boxes. A comparison of the simulation data with the existing constant setpoint revealed 20% annual energy savings in the improved minimum airflow setpoint. The experiment showed that the room air temperature can be maintained stably and the vertical difference in the room air temperature is lower than the comfort value when the improved minimum airflow setpoint is applied. Measurements of the CO₂ levels also revealed no indoor air quality problems.

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This study investigates indoor thermal conditions in traditional Chinese shophouses (CSHs) in Malacca, Malaysia, using field measurements and focuses on the cooling effects of courtyards. The results indicate that the indoor air temperature in the living rooms of CSHs was approximately 5-6°C lower than the outdoor temperature during the day primarily due to structural cooling effects with night ventilation, whereas the indoor air temperature at night was similar to the outdoor temperature. If the thermal adaptations of the occupants were considered, then the thermal conditions in the living rooms were acceptable for most of the day. The results indicate that the front courtyards functioned as a cooling source for the surrounding spaces in the CSHs.

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The indoor thermal environment is affected by many heat factors such as occupants′ activities and outdoor climate changes. Because each of them varies asynchronously, the heat factors′ variation shows a nonsingle degree of freedom overall. Moreover, the heat factors′ impact on space is not uniform. Therefore, there always exist spatial distributions and temporal variations.
In practice, the number of degrees of freedom of an air-conditioning system is usually limited and less than that of the object zone. The control performance of an air-conditioning system designed under a perfect mixing method cannot be satisfactory because the spatial distribution is neglected. For energy conservation and thermal comfort improvement, it is necessary to propose an air-conditioning system design method which can positively use the spatial distribution and temporal variation of the indoor thermal environment.
In this study, methods for indoor temperature fluctuation analysis and optimization of air-conditioner sensor location are proposed. To represent the temperature field structure, an index called CRI is integrated. With this method, the spatial distribution and temporal variation can be calculated immediately and analyzed statistically; furthermore, the indoor temperature and outdoor climate′s correlation can be concisely visualized. A case study is conducted to verify the validity of this method.

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