Urban residential areas significantly influence outdoor thermal comfort through architectural morphology. This study concentrates on the multi-objective optimization of the thermal comfort environment in residential areas, with a focus on Yulin—a city in the cold, inland region of Northwestern China. Yulin is characterized by its distinctly defined seasons, particularly harsh and windy conditions in the spring, which significantly impact thermal comfort. Utilizing field surveys, characteristics of scale and layout from high-rise residential areas in Yulin were extracted to formulate design strategies adapted to local climates. The Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) served as the optimization criterion, and genetic algorithms, integrated with parametric modeling software, generated multiple layout schemes. These were refined through the Pareto evolutionary algorithm II to optimize thermal comfort across seasons. Furthermore, the Sobol’ sensitivity analysis method was employed to assess the impact of key parameters on outdoor thermal comfort, identifying crucial layout design elements. The optimization improved UTCI values for different seasons, ensuring year-round comfort. Specifically, summer UTCI improved to 25.51, while winter and spring values reached optimal values of −14.02 and −6.41, demonstrating enhanced thermal retention and reduced wind exposure. Sobol’ sensitivity analysis identified building length, orientation, and density as key parameters, highlighting their critical impact on thermal comfort. This study offers practical guidelines for urban residential area design in similar climatic zones, aligning architectural planning with environmental sustainability and enhancing thermal comfort effectively. This study provides practical guidelines for the design of residential areas in cold inland—seasonal windy—regions and other similar climatic zones, aligning building morphology design with environmental sustainability and enhancing thermal comfort effectively.

Qinghai Province urgently requires the development of adaptive energy-efficient rural housing construction to address resettlement needs arising from hydropower projects, given the region’s characteristic combination of high solar irradiance resources and severe cold climate conditions. This research establishes localized retrofit strategies through systematic field investigations and Rhinoceros modeling simulations of five representative rural residences across four villages. The key findings reveal that comprehensive building envelope retrofits achieve an 80% reduction in energy consumption. South-facing sunspaces demonstrate effective thermal buffering capacity, though their spatial depth exhibits negligible correlation with heating energy requirements. An optimized hybrid shading system combining roof overhangs and vertical louvers demonstrates critical efficacy in summer overheating mitigation, with vertical louvers demonstrating superior thermal and luminous regulation precision. Architectural orientation analysis identifies an optimal alignment within ±10° of true south, emphasizing the functional zoning principle of positioning primary living spaces in south-oriented ground floor areas while locating auxiliary functions in northeastern/northwestern zones. The integrated design framework synergizes three core components: passive solar optimization, climate-responsive shading mechanisms, and performance-enhanced envelope systems, achieving simultaneous improvements in energy efficiency and thermal comfort within resettlement housing constraints. This methodology establishes a replicable paradigm for climate-resilient rural architecture in high-altitude, solar-intensive cold regions, effectively reconciling community reconstruction needs with low-carbon development imperatives through context-specific technical solutions.

Solar energy is a type of renewable and sustainable energy. Enhancing the acquisition and utilization of solar radiation in urban residential areas is a crucial strategy for advancing sustainable development goals. The morphology of urban residential areas plays a vital role in determining their solar radiation acquisition (SRA) potential. Existing studies have primarily focused on exploring the correlation between the individual morphology index and SRA potential for residential areas. However, in the actual process of project design, there is a common need to simultaneously adjust multiple morphology indexes according to specific criteria. The question of “How to compare the magnitude of the impact of simultaneous changes in multiple morphology indexes on the SRA potential of a residential area” has not yet been systematically analyzed and fully answered. This study compares the sensitivity of multiple morphology indexes when changed collectively and assesses their comprehensive impact on the SRA potential of residential areas. The aim is to determine how to comprehensively control multiple morphology indexes in the early planning and design stages to maximize solar energy utilization in residential areas. It is concluded that, when considering the floor area ratio index under identical conditions, an increase in building density proves more advantageous for enhancing SRA compared to an increase in building height. In cases where the building height is less than 24 m and the floor area ratio is below 1.5, elevating the building density yields greater photovoltaic (PV) potential for the residential area. With a limited site area, the impact of building height on SRA far outweighs that of the layout. The layout does not significantly affect the annual solar radiation amount per unit of external surface area (ASU). With increasing building height, the impact of layout on heating season solar radiation amount per unit of external surface area (HSU) becomes more pronounced. A vertical staggered layout and a row layout exhibit significantly superior performance compared to a horizontal staggered layout in this regard. However, when the building height exceeds 24 m and the floor area ratio surpasses 1.5, the PV potential of the vertical staggered layout surpasses that of the row layout and horizontal staggered layout for the same building height. The influence of building height on SRA is slightly greater than that of the building orientation under similar conditions. The change in SRA potential with orientation under the same height follows a consistent pattern.