As a theory in ancient China, Feng Shui is used in terrain exploring to find ideal living environments. In this study, 62 traditional villages documented on China’s and Jiangxi’s protection lists in Jinxi County, Jiangxi Province were divided into four categories according to their landscape patterns and were simulated by CFD (computational fluid dynamics) with PHOENICS and quantitatively analyzed based on their wind and thermal environments. The results showed that hills greatly improve the wind environment of villages when they are in the windward direction. Concerning thermal environments, water and vegetation effectively reduced the summer temperatures in villages, while hills kept villages warm in winter. This paper verified the positive effect of elements such as mountains, water and forests on the improvement of wind and thermal environments of villages and the rationality of the site election principle of Bei Shan Mian Shui, also known as back mountain facing water, which is upheld by Feng Shui. This paper explored the philosophy of traditional village location selection, demonstrating the ecological wisdom of ancient Chinese people in creating a good living environment, and provides a new direction for current sustainable development planning.

Propagating architectural heritage is of great significance to the inheritance and protection of local culture. Recommendations based on user preferences can greatly benefit the promotion of local architectural heritage so as to better protect and inherit historical culture. Thus, a powerful tool is necessary to build such a recommendation system. Recently, deep learning methods have proliferated as a means to analyze data in architectural domains. In this paper, based on a case study of Jiangxi, China, we explore a recommendation system for the architectural heritage of a local area. To organize our experiments, a dataset for traditional Chinese architecture heritage is constructed and a deep hashing retrieval method is proposed for the recommendation task. By utilizing a data fine-tuning strategy, our retrieval method can realize high-accuracy recommendation and break the model training restriction caused by insufficient data on local architectural heritage. Furthermore, we analyze the retrieval answers and map the data into a two-dimensional space to reveal the relationships between different architectural heritage categories. An image-to-location application is also provided for a better user experience.

The design of street canyons has become a focus of attention under the requirements of high-quality urban modernization, while existing research has gradually broken through the basic norms of aesthetic design to include ecological considerations. However, it is only in recent decades that relevant research has been carried out in super and super-large cities in China. In this article, we take Nanchang, one of the largest cities in China, as an example, and use ENVI-met software (v5.5.1.) to simulate and analyze the street canyon of the city. Certain measurements were made and verified to compare the microclimatic conditions of street canyons at different scales. The relationship between street canyon morphology and outdoor thermal comfort was explored in terms of near-surface air temperature, wind speed, and thermal comfort indicators. The results show that there is a high correlation between the morphology of street canyons, such as orientation, aspect ratio interface continuity, and outdoor thermal comfort. Therefore, starting from adjusting the morphological characteristics of street canyons, practical suggestions can be provided for urban planners to guide the sustainable development of contemporary cities and improve the comfort of urban street spaces.

Energy conservation and carbon reduction in buildings have become important concerns and, at the same time, the value of low-tech approaches employed in indigenous architecture is increasingly acknowledged as a pertinent reference for contemporary design practices. The research on vernacular dwellings in Jiangxi has many perspectives and fruitful results, but not enough attention has been paid to the research on climate adaptation. This article verifies the vernacular dwellings’ climate adaptation and summarizes the low-tech methods embedded in vernacular dwellings, aiming to provide guidelines for future exploration of energy-saving and carbon-reducing practices in architecture. By selecting different types of vernacular dwellings in Nanfeng County, this article verifies three aspects of the ecological characteristics of vernacular dwellings: the light environment, wind environment, and energy consumption, by comparing them with those of local modern residential buildings. It is concluded that the average daylight factor of the hall area of vernacular dwellings is better than that of the modern residential buildings in rural areas, and the vernacular dwellings regulate the indoor wind environment and maintain indoor comfort through natural ventilation in winter and summer seasons. Also, the annual energy consumption of the vernacular dwellings per unit area per year can be reduced by up to about 32% in comparison with modern residential buildings. Subsequently, the article concludes that patio space has a positive impact on the indoor physical environment through comparative experiments. Vernacular dwellings are well adapted to the local climate in terms of form, structure, and materials, and these low-tech methods should be applied to the design of rural dwellings in the future.

Currently, there remains a lack of systematic quantitative analysis of the acoustic impact mechanism of ancestral temple theatres in relation to their core function of opera performance. This paper takes the Zhaomutang—a typical ancestral temple theatre in northeast Jiangxi—as an example, and comprehensively uses on-site mapping, impulse response testing, and ODEON three-dimensional sound field simulation to conduct acoustic sensitivity analysis on five key spatial elements of the theatre. The results show that the theatre has a hierarchical sound field pattern along its depth, characterized by “high in the front, low in the rear, stronger on the sides and weaker in the middle”. The front patio and the Xiangtang support the clarity of Gan opera dialogue and the fullness of singing through early lateral reflections and moderate reverberation (EDT of 0.8–1.1 s, C₈₀ of 3.2–6.1 dB). However, the rear patio and the Qintang show apparent loudness deficiency (G of −1.5–3.2 dB) and lack of spatial immersion (LF₈₀ below 0.23). The most effective optimization comes from the reconstruction of the geometric relationship between performers and audience: moving the performers forward and appropriately raising the stage and audience area floor can significantly shorten the rear area EDT and increase C₈₀ and G; in contrast, the improvement in sound quality brought about by adding a patio cover and raising the gables is minimal, and the changes in various parameters are generally less than 1 JND. Based on this, the “schedule priority—reversible intervention” acoustic maintenance strategy for living heritage is proposed, and it is suggested that reversible reflective components be set in the side corridor to specifically enhance the sense of immersion in the rear area sound field. The study constructs a quantitative correlation framework of space, materials, and sound field, providing methodological support and parameter basis for the acoustic assessment and protective utilization of ancestral temple theatres.