As the cathedral serving Zuoyun and parts of Inner Mongolia, the Batayizi Church in Datong, Shanxi is the largest surviving Italian Gothic-style Catholic church in the region. The church features a rigorous layout and refined details, making it a significant case study for the dissemination and development of Western architecture in China. Previous studies have focused on local chronicles, aesthetic analyses, and the indigenization of Catholic churches in Shanxi. Due to the scarcity of archival materials, research on the architecture itself has not yet been conducted. The article first summarizes the construction rules of local form and order of Italian Gothic churches based on related church remains and literature. Next, it establishes the architectural form of the church by combining construction rules and field surveys. Finally, the reconstruction design of the church is completed. As the first reconstruction study of the Batayizi Church, this paper attempts to explore a Reconstruction path based on the construction of local form and order of the church and systematically restores the main facade, floor plan, and structural form of the church. The results not only provide insights for the reconstruction of modern Catholic churches in Shanxi but also offer new ideas and methods for the study of the localization of Western architecture in China.

Wood- and lignocellulosic-residue-derived constituents have attracted increasing attention in cementitious materials because they may support clinker reduction, waste valorization, moisture regulation, crack control, and longer service life. This review synthesizes evidence on wood ash, wood-derived biochar, and wood or lignocellulosic fibers in low-clinker and low-carbon-oriented cementitious systems, with emphasis on severe cold service involving freeze–thaw cycling, salt freezing, and chloride ingress. This review clarifies the evidence boundaries among direct wood-derived materials and related biomass or lignocellulosic analogues, because wood ash, non-wood biomass ashes, such as bamboo ash and bagasse ash, wood fiber, and non-wood plant fibers cannot be treated as equivalent materials. Wood ash is best regarded as a controlled partial binder replacement or filler whose performance depends on combustion temperature, oxide composition, alkali content, residual carbon, fineness, and water demand. Biochar is more appropriately treated as a low-dosage functional additive, commonly in the range of approximately 1–3 wt.% of binder, where it may assist internal curing, nucleation, moisture redistribution, and pore regulation; excessive dosage can increase porosity and reduce mechanical or transport performance. Wood and lignocellulosic fibers mainly contribute to crack control, toughness, and post-cracking behavior, but their effectiveness is limited by water absorption, swelling, lignin- and extractive-related hydration interference, and long-term interfacial degradation in alkaline matrices. Across these material classes, engineering performance is governed by the interfacial transition zone, pore-size distribution, moisture state, air–void compatibility, and exposure-specific durability response. The main contribution of this review is to propose a boundary-conscious framework for material classification, quantitative comparison, mixture-design screening, and severe-cold durability qualification. Future application requires source-specific characterization, water-demand control, treated fibers, low-dosage biochar optimization, and service-informed testing that couples freeze–thaw cycling, chloride transport, saturation state, and microstructural verification.

Analyzing the long-term evolution of meso-scale urban morphological types is constrained by the “small-sample, high-dimensional” nature of historical data, which weakens the robustness and interpretability of conventional data-driven methods and limits the use of morphological evidence in digital urban analysis and built environment governance. To address this, we propose a theory-guided modular principal component analysis (TG-MPCA) framework for sample-constrained morphological research. By embedding domain knowledge into dimensionality reduction, the framework extracts compact, low-dimensional morphological indices that are both morphologically interpretable and internally stable within the selected sample set. Applied to Harbin’s representative districts through unsupervised hierarchical clustering, evolutionary lineage analysis, and transition node identification, it reveals a “layered response pattern” among morphological modules, an asymmetrical mapping between morphological types and historical periods, a structural breakpoint around 1946 that parallels post-war Western urban restructuring, and anomalous deceleration and premature convergence in typological evolution during transitional periods. These observations offer a meso-scale morphological perspective for understanding both the spatial transformation of Chinese cities and the developmental challenges of Northeast China’s old industrial bases, while demonstrating the value of theory-guided quantitative analysis for transforming fragmented historical spatial information into interpretable morphological evidence in data-constrained contexts.

Forest residues are increasingly considered recoverable biomass resources for circular and low-carbon cement-based materials. However, life cycle assessment (LCA) findings remain difficult to compare because studies differ in residue definitions, system boundaries, functional units, allocation rules, biogenic-carbon treatment, logistics assumptions, and durability modelling. This structured integrative methodological review synthesizes peer-reviewed studies and relevant methodological guidance identified through targeted searches of the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus, with literature coverage restricted to publications available from 1 January 2018 to 25 December 2025. Foundational standards and directly relevant methodological sources were also considered where they supported functional-unit interpretation, allocation, biogenic-carbon accounting, spatial LCA, durability-to-LCA translation, or end-of-life modelling. The review focuses on three cement-based routes: wood-derived aggregates or fillers, wood-waste ash as a supplementary cementitious material, and forest-residue-derived biochar additives. The reviewed evidence is mapped to a three-tier functional-unit hierarchy: per kg dry residue input for process-level screening, per m ³ of concrete meeting a declared performance class for technology comparison, and per tonne CO ₂ -eq mitigated for policy interpretation. A worked numerical example illustrates how pathway ranking can change when strength or service-life equivalence is imposed. The review also develops a context-sensitive allocation framework, a structured summary of biogenic-carbon conventions, and a GIS–LCA workflow that accounts for supply radius, infrastructure, data scarcity, and regional variability. Durability is linked to LCA through exposure-conditioned indicators, service-life models, maintenance inventories, and material-specific end-of-life scenarios. Uncertainty treatment is specified through data-quality appraisal, scenario and sensitivity analysis, and Monte Carlo propagation where defensible parameter distributions are available. The GIS–LCA structure is presented as a methodological decision-support proposal rather than as a universally validated pathway-ranking model.

Forest-residue-derived constituents are increasingly being considered for low-carbon cementitious materials, but their functions differ substantially and should not be treated as a single waste-substitution category. Wood ash may serve as a screened supplementary cementitious material or mineral filler, wood-derived biochar mainly modifies hydration and pore-water behavior at low dosage, and wood fiber acts primarily as crack-control reinforcement. This review compares these three material classes through their source-specific characteristics, quantitative performance ranges, and governing microstructural mechanisms. Direct evidence from wood-derived constituents is distinguished from mechanistic analog evidence from non-wood biomass ashes and lignocellulosic fibers. Published studies commonly examine wood ash at approximately 5%–20% cement replacement and biochar at low dosages, often at approximately 0.5–3 wt% of binder, while wood and related lignocellulosic fibers are generally used at low volume fractions. These ranges are screening values rather than universal design limits because performance depends strongly on processing, water demand, dispersion, interfacial behavior, and mixture composition. Cold-region exposure is considered a demanding service-qualification case rather than as a separate material theme. Freeze–thaw, salt exposure, and chloride transport are used to assess whether changes in pore-water distribution, air-void stability, interfaces, and crack connectivity remain beneficial under severe service conditions. The review concludes with a staged route from constituent characterization and mixture screening to mechanism verification, exposure-relevant testing, and field validation.