ABSTRACT This paper proposes a gamified approach to collect and visualize human perception of daylighting in large-scale indoor environments using immersive virtual environments (IVEs). The developed system was tested by 20 participants, where their daylighting preferences for the virtual environment were collected at two daytimes through snapshotting and evaluating their points of interest in terms

Abstract Historical memorials, in most parts of the world, represent and are associated with the cultures, arts, and architectures of the time they are born within. Examples of such structures which include museum-like settings are the Tomb of Nader Shah in Mashhad, Avicenna Mausoleum in Hamadan, and the Mausoleum of Poets in Tabriz. Apropos of architectural patterns, the model of mausoleums should

Abstract The number of building information modeling (BIM)-applied construction projects has been increased with an expectation that it will transform the labor-intensive building industry into a knowledge-based one. The time and effort required for modeling vary depending on the type of work, and therefore most BIM applications focus on certain work trade of high effectiveness. In this study, we propose

ABSTRACT Influenced by traditional Chinese natural philosophy and increasing concern for environmental sustainability nowadays, water has been recognized as an embodiment of cultural identity and a desired component of the campus environment in China. This study focuses on the distinctive element, aims to clarify the characteristics of water-featured open spaces on Chinese university campuses, and

Abstract The buildings’ indoor condition called “indoor environmental quality (IEQ)” has become a major goal, all IEQ elements must be maintained within a certain range for the comfort and health of the occupants. To achieve this goal, the previous studies focused on building occupants’ responses based on their activities and the changes in IEQ. Few studies, however, have comprehensively analyzed the

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to use Virtual Reality(VR) and electrocardiograms (ECGs) to analyse differences in autonomic nervous responses affected by the plan configuration. Four different plan configurations of single-person households were chosen based on a prior study and built using VR. An ECG was then recorded within each plan type and the average low-frequency/high-frequency (LF/HF)

ABSTRACT A novel precast composite column with L-shape steels and infilled reinforced concrete (LSRC) is proposed and assessed by experimental research and numerical simulation. The LSRC column is constructed with four L-shape steels placing at corners, a reinforced cage placing outside and the casted concrete. The L-shape steels are connected by batten plates and the reinforcement cage is made up

ABSTRACT An experimental investigation was conducted to explore the flexural behaviour of reinforced beam made with dune sand (DS) from Gurbantunggut desert in northwest China’s Xinjiang province. In order to study the influence of DS replacement levels on the engineering properties of dune sand concrete (DSC) beam, the mechanical properties of DSC and the flexural behaviour of DSC beam were examined

ABSTRACT Sky type classification is a significant element in daylight simulation. As a “winter city”, the daylight climate of Harbin is distinctive, and there is therefore a particular need to determine the most appropriate sky models to establish sky luminance distribution in the city and thereby improve the accuracy of daylight simulations. To determine the closest sky type to that of Harbin during

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the impact of uncertain shade behavior on three facades (east, south and west) on energy performance. A previously developed stochastic shade behavior model and an occupancy model were used to conduct building co-simulation for determining energy-related performance uncertainty (annual energy demand and peak heating/cooling loads) at different building scales. Statistical

This study aims to propose a design method to promote the flexibility of a floorplan of an apartment building. Areas which permit the change of floorplan are assigned and demarcated in some part of a floorplan to evade the conjunction with physical structures of a building. These assigned areas for change can act as a mediator to extend the range of flexibility of floorplans. The former part of this

This study aimed to demonstrate an erection of the irregular L-shaped precast frames utilizing rigid mechanical joints. Precast columns of L-shaped sections were introduced to replace rectangular columns, which do not fit inside corners; sections are preferred by architects because of their architectural flexibility at the corners of walls. The mechanical connections of steel-concrete composite precast

Abstract This study seeks to obtain basic knowledge about structural changes in the period of urban maturation by understanding the changes in real structures at urban development areas in suburbs developed during the urban expansion period. In this study, existing inland industrial estates in a suburb were studied, with the main focus being the changes in spatial composition and the development processes

ABSTRACT This study performed field surveys and investigated the formal and technological characteristics of traditional buildings in the Southern area of Hubei province, China, and reviewed the related historical archives and literature. This study is helpful for architects or urban administrators to understand how traditional vernacular buildings contribute to energy saving. After field surveying

ABSTRACT Prediction of construction cost and life-cycle cost through preliminary estimate is very important for the economic decision-making in the early phase of building projects. However, the conventional preliminary estimate has a high error range and low reliability because it relies only on the basic information of projects. In addition, the consideration of the life-cycle cost of the building

This study was conducted to investigate Color Rendering Index (CRI) recommendations for light emitting diode (LED) lighting in spaces needing better color rendition. Four LED spectra, that is, two spectra at Commission Internationale de l’Eclairage (CIE) Ra < 80 (79 and 76) and two spectra at CIE Ra ≥ 80 (83 and 84) were used in this study. The CIE Ra lacks accuracy in predicting perceived color quality

Abstract This paper takes the spatial characteristics of residential communities in China as a case study, focusing on three aspects: (1) scale-like spatial parameters, including density and land-mass scale; (2) spatial parameters of facility space layout, including spatial distribution of public service facilities, and coverage, density of facilities, layout and coverage of road transport facilities

Abstract Narrow streets in densely built-up areas face problems in terms of disaster prevention. However, such streets serve as spaces for activities, communication, and a comfortable lifestyle, and thus, such streets should be considered for redesign in view of their beneficial aspects. Therefore, this study aims to examine the physical characteristics of these beneficial streets and discuss their

Abstract Under earthquake, two beams of the aqueduct’s expansion joint may collide, thus this will endanger the safety of the structure and even lead to girder falling accident. Quite a few studies of this issue use the simple one-dimensional model, but little takes the collision phenomenon under the action of multi-dimensional earthquake into account. According to the Contact-Impact Problems of large-scale

Abstract Vertical compressive stress of the foundation is a vital parameter for determining the coefficient of self-weight collapsibility of loess tunnels. This paper aims to provide a theoretical solution for the vertical compressive stress of shallow neighbourhood loess tunnel foundation. Firstly, the formula of boundary depth for deep- and shallow-buried neighbourhood loess tunnels with the consideration

This study investigated wayfinding strategy and efficiency. Experiments involving 44 participants (22 Japanese and 22 Taiwanese nationals) were conducted in Tamsui, Taiwan and Yokohama, Japan. Experimental tools included electronic and paper maps. Participants were in an unfamiliar environment, understood environmental information differently, and used different navigation tools. The researchers recorded

ABSTRACT Due to the space requirement in the small units of social housing, the occupants extend the size to have a comfortable living. Although the size has been extended, it remains inhumane, gives a slum impression, and occupies public spaces around the building. The study was conducted in the oldest social housing in Surabaya. Data were collected through observation, demonstration, photographs

Abstract “Low vision” is defined as uncorrectable vision loss that interferes with daily activities. The gazing behavior exhibited by people with low vision as they walk is particularly important because it illustrates how they utilize information in various environments. In this study, eight participants with low vision and eight fully sighted participants were asked to navigate a roadway and a sidewalk

Abstract In the context of China’s fast urbanization, the background of urban landmarks is constantly changing, which provides useful examples for the study of visual preference evaluation of urban landmarks. With the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower as research object, the pictures of 24 years were used as the research material, and the height ratio, building density, distance, volume of the

ABSTRACT With an increasing demand for quieter residential environments, impact sound insulation for floating floors is gaining importance. However, existing methods for estimating the performance of heavy impact sound insulation are limited by their inability to comprehensively analyze various types of floating floors, as well as difficulties mathematically determining the input force of the reference

Herein, we aimed to improve the thermal insulation of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) windows to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. Currently, the gold standard PVC window is triple glazed and has a thermal transmittance of 0.7 W/(m2·K). However, further reduction in the thermal transmittance of the windows via quadruple glazing is not feasible because this would make the windows too heavy and expensive

ABSTRACT The authors suggested mechanical connections for splicing two precast columns in their previous study. The present study proposes an efficient method of improving the performance of these connections consisting of laminated plates with additional interior stiffeners (interior bolts and rib stiffeners) to improve the efficiency of the design. The aim of this study was to develop a method for

ABSTRACT Over the past decades, automation and robotics have been widely adopted in the construction industry as a promising solution for troubleshooting issues. This field is highly interdisciplinary and rapidly changing, and new concepts and ideas are being actively introduced in association with the existing ones. To reveal new insights, the evolution of knowledge in this field needs to be characterized

ABSTRACT Application of BIM plays a key role in the practices of architecture, engineering and construction. Evaluating and improving BIM application capability have important effects on increasing BIM performance and enhancing the benefits of BIM usages. To evaluate the BIM application capability of construction enterprises, this study proposed an evaluation model based on interval grey cluster analysis

Abstract The occupational safety risk of high-altitude fall accident in architecture construction engineering is dynamically changeable. Considering these dynamic changes, how to make a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the changing trends of the occupational safety risk, and providing the basis for the latter occupational safety risk control measures, become the main target of the dynamic risk

ABSTRACT Architectural style positioning is an important part in the process of residential building design and project planning. However, in practice, due to the complexity and ambiguity of styles, style positioning often relies more on the subjective judgement of the designers and lacks scientificity. This paper proposes a method for the classification and prediction of residential building styles

ABSTRACT With building energy codes getting strict, quantitative analysis is necessary in the early design stage of high-energy-performance buildings. To fully explore the design space, a highly efficient method is necessary. In the research, a new design exploring framework was proposed. Parameters are screened and separated into groups based on the sensitivity analysis, to reduce the dimension of

ABSTRACT In 2016, the Chinese government raised community opening policy for the first time. In order to study the effects of spatial anticrime in open communities, five quantifiable evaluation indexes are selected, which are “flow density, police deployment distance, spatial visibility, anti-capture ability and spatial connectivity”. They are applied to the quantitative analysis of the spatial anticrime

ABSTRACT Visibility is an important factor for decision-making regarding the visual quality of the skyline of modern cities which dominated by tall buildings. The basic method of visibility is referred to the concept of targeted isovist that represents the visible portion of the target area of tall buildings. This paper presents a reliable method of visibility analysis for tall building clusters, examining

ABSTRACT Due to the natural environment and the consumption of the earth’s resources, the ecological damage and resource depletion have become a serious problem facing the world in recent years. To understand the design process of the interior decoration and its associated environmental issues, a plan was developed on how to introduce the green interior design concept with a view of creating a safe

ABSTRACT Green and energy-saving reforms, which use protection as a precondition, can, not only reduce a building’s energy use but also improve its level of comfort. Such reforms can also adapt to the new demands of modern society while extending the life of traditional architecture. Therefore, this research chose a classical, traditional house in Hangzhou Zhejiang, China, as a transformation object

ABSTRACT This paper compares the changes in the production of wooden houses after WWII in Jeollanamdo in South Korea and Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. This study finds that wooden house production shares the following similarities in both locations: (1) traditional wooden post and beam houses were constructed by local carpenters using local wood; (2) following WWII, houses came to be constructed of

ABSTRACT Modular construction offers benefits such as high quality, low cost, and short durations owing to the high productivity of repetitive production. To maximize productivity, modular construction involves repetitive schedules; however, the scheduling methods exhibit limitations when applied to on-site work. These methods are optimized by adjusting the production rate of activities; however, the

ABSTRACT Green building has witnessed significant growth in the North American market in recent years. Since the construction cost of green office buildings represents a significant impact on the life cycle costs in office buildings in North America, and since green building costs are still not well understood by building owners, a linear regression model is developed in this study to enable office

ABSTRACT Reviving historical towns and urban districts requires conservation and reuse of traditional buildings crucially in preserving the external form while introducing contemporary contents into the interior spaces. Short of contemporary comfort and efficiency, the traditional interior unavoidably contradicts the preservation for according improvement of comfort as the crux. Setting out from construction

ABSTRACT Natural soil can play an important role in the production of geopolymer due to having required aluminosilicate precursors and abundant availability. Numerous aluminosilicate materials have been used in the past for the production of geopolymers but they have some limitations like various ashes can be toxic during handling and processing due to presence of harmful components. The major purpose

ABSTRACT Recently, in Japan, there is a case that the pile end of the building did not reach the firm layer because the soil layer was complicated. In such a case with piles with insufficient length, the existing pile modelling method cannot be applied. Therefore, we tried to model the load–settlement relationship of a pile with insufficient length through a two-dimensional (2D) analysis. Firstly,

ABSTRACT The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 resulted in serious radiation damage in Fukushima Prefecture. Although evacuation orders were enforced in 11 municipalities, they were lifted by April 1, 2017 with the exception of “difficult-to-return zone” in 9 of them. This study aims to analyze population and household trends

ABSTRACT Most of the design codes for the composite columns including American Concrete Institute do not account for the concrete confinements offered by the steel cores encased in the concrete section. However, the flexural capacities of the axially and laterally loaded composite columns were substantially underestimated as the axial load increases if the concrete confinement provided by a steel core

ABSTRACT The word “Light” has two common meanings, one is illuminant (referred as LIGHT in this paper), and the other is something of little weight (referred as light in this paper). The “Weight of LIGHT” is an art of creating visual illusion applied in architecture design, which is a new understanding about LIGHT as well as the relationship between LIGHT and users. This study develops the concept

ABSTRACT The staying activity in shopping street has an inseparable relation with the spatial scale of the street. Neither too narrow nor too wide scale of street could bring a good walking experience to pedestrian, so it is especially important to find a suitable scale. Most of the researches are qualitative investigations related to human psychology, and few of them are about underground shopping

ABSTRACT Among the popular construction materials used in the UAE are Insulated Concrete Blocks (ICB). This block is a combination of a unique block design and insulating inserts that enable this block to be highly energy efficient. This paper aims at investigating the thermal performance of this block during different climatic seasons. An experimental model was constructed in the emirate of Sharjah

ABSTRACT Outdoor space is essential for urban residents’ daily activities, and thermal comfort is an important indicator to evaluate these places. Currently, there are few studies on city outdoor thermal comfort in western China. This paper, by use of weather stations and questionnaires, studies the relationship between outdoor thermal comfort, adaptive thermal comfort, residents’ social characteristics

ABSTRACT This article investigates the differences in aesthetic preferences on external facades on non-architects. A combination of a card sorting technique, a semi-structured interview, and a Mind sketching technique is employed. Data analysis was carried out using the qualitative techniques of content analysis. Findings reveal that non-architects were able to identify what they like and dislike regarding

ABSTRACT Currently, the Korean society has entered a critical transition period that requires long-term residential alternatives that provide a better quality of life. This study reviewed the literature and statistical data from Korea and Japan to gain insight into the residential crisis of small households in Korea. The review found that the residential issues of small households should be managed

ABSTRACT Shantang Street in Suzhou serves as the object of this study; field investigation, street mapping, data statistics, and other methods are utilized to observe spatial elements, tourist density, and the relationships among them. The spatial elements of Shantang Street are divided into basic elements (store density, facade opening, water proximity, D/H) and activity elements (upper shelter, commercial

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between urban built environment factors and the travel behaviours of visually impaired people. Using mobile phone data containing information on the movements of people with visual impairment, the association between their traffic volume and the built environment factors of land uses, public transit, and pedestrian facilities for visually

ABSTRACT Rapid development of long-span urban transportation hubs arouses higher requirements of structural design methods. However, the current design codes do not give effective provisions of the equivalent uniform live load for long-span transportation hubs. A revised equivalent uniform live load is developed by considering the aspect (length-to-width) ratio of the one-way slab system for the urban

ABSTRACT Performance measurement has become conventional in construction management. However, it is non-trivial to establish an effective system to capture, evaluate, and feedback the on-site data. Whilst 3D object–based technology prevails in the industry, project managers remain accustomed to text-based system. Unstructured data format requires a tremendous amount of time and effort when analyzing

ABSTRACT An analytical model was developed that accounted for double confinement provided by both transverse reinforcements and wide flange steel sections in the compression zone. This study also found that the amount of confinements was very sensitive to the post-yield behavior of the composite columns, especially when the buckling in compression region occurred. The nominal moment capacity and post-yield

ABSTRACT Shading louvers are widely used in buildings to protect the indoor environment from excessive heat gain, especially in hot climatic regions. However, few studies mentioned their influences on wind characteristics. As a type of external components on building facades, shading louvers play an important role in wind-induced physical fields, such as wind pressure distribution and airflow pattern

ABSTRACT Predicting project cost overruns in the bidding stage has undergone significant changes with the application of state-of-the-art techniques. Both modeling techniques and domain knowledge should be integrated to enhance predictions of cost performance. This study developed an ensemble-learning classification model to predict the expected cost-overrun levels of public projects and derive explanatory

Abstract The aim of this paper was to present the fracture criteria of the SRC columns based on the nonlinear analytical model. This study explored the flexural behavior of the SRC columns confined by the cross-shaped flange sections encased in the structural concrete which are subjected to the flexural loads and the axial loads with 40% of the axial loads relative to the nominal axial load capacity

ABSTRACT Systematic management of safety factors can improve project performance in terms of schedule and cost effectiveness as well as lead to a significant reduction of safety hazards. The purpose of this study is to determine critical safety factors focusing on the construction environments of a developing country, the Mongolia. Through extensive literature review, the authors selected prospective

ABSTRACT Following the rapid pace of urbanisation, Chinese cities have launched a new wave of large-scale infrastructure, including cultural building construction. From 1998 to 2015, more than 360 grand theatres were built (or renovated) together with libraries, museums and children’s palaces. The number of newly built theatres may have been more than the total sum built in Europe over the past 70 years