Cultural memes, which have the same heritability and variability as particulate biological genes, provide culture units that can be shared and transmitted across different periods, allowing cultural computing to be performed in a fine-grained manner. This paper extracts regional architectural cultural memes from the basic information of Harbin city’s modern architectural heritage and constructs an urban historical architectural cultural meme matrix. By using the social network calculation method, we analyse representative architectural memes, such as material memes, structural system memes, and architectural style memes, which represent the evolution of urban architectural culture, construct a network of urban architectural cultural memes, and explore their clustering characteristics and centrality characteristics. The research shows that Harbin’s urban architectural culture in the development and evolution of the process has a holistic cultural characterisation beyond architectural meme monoliths and architectural memeplexes and has formed a highly coupled and complex cultural system. The clustering coefficients of the architectural meme networks in the cultural pattern of urban architecture in different periods are all between 0.575 and 0.676 (more than 0.5), suggesting that the cultural similarities within the clusters of architectural heritages in the city have the characteristics of continuous heredity. The methodology and conclusions of this study can provide a methodological reference for the design of contemporary urban architecture cultural patterns and provide data supporting the development and improvement of urban historic district conservation planning.

Urban color is a crucial visual component of urban aesthetics, directly reflecting national traditional aesthetic consciousness and historical culture, and holding significant aesthetic value and research relevance. As a key factor in urban color studies, color preference significantly impacts human behavior and plays a vital role in urban planning and development. However, a comprehensive and systematic understanding of urban color preferences remains underexplored. This study examines 379 relevant studies using bibliometric review methods and literature visualization tools, classifying, and synthesizing them according to research hotspots and fields. Four primary categories influencing urban color preference were identified: personal attributes, socio-cultural influences, environmental space, and dynamic factors. The analysis also highlights the psychological mechanisms underlying color preference, including its effects on emotional regulation, cognitive processing, and social identity. The findings contribute to the field by offering a data-driven framework for understanding urban color preferences and proposing practical applications for urban planning. The study emphasizes the importance of color preference in promoting human well-being and sustainable urban development, with implications for future interdisciplinary research.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the issue of agriculture, rural people and rural areas. After nearly twenty years, the living environment of farmers has been initially improved. However, there are still problems of uneven development and environmental pollution of some areas. For this reason, China has put forward the strategy of rural vitalization, aiming at solving the problems above. With this opportunity, it is feasible to develop green houses in rural areas. Taking the rural housing in Northeast China as an example, this paper analyses rural housing present situation there. The concept of suitability for green building technologies is raised. Based on this, the index system of suitability evaluation of green technologies for residential buildings in northeast rural areas is established. It provides strategies for the government to promote green rural housing.

Efforts to improve the energy performance of historic buildings have attracted growing attention from both policymakers and researchers over the past few decades. Based on 318 publications from the Web of Science database, this study conducts a review analysis in the field of historic building energy retrofit. Bibliometric analysis shows a remarkably increasing trend in research on this topic since 2015 and reveals a research imbalance between developed regions (e.g., Europe) and developing regions. This review examines the retrofit approaches of historic buildings using both passive and active strategies and synthesizes the understanding of life cycle assessment carbon emissions across different systaem boundaries, emission stages, and carbon accounting approaches. The results show that previous studies tend to focus primarily on energy performance, yet predominantly rely on simulation studies of individual cases, limiting cross-regional comparisons and the broader transferability of findings. Therefore, a multi-objective evaluation framework is proposed, considering thermal comfort, energy use, and carbon emissions, enabling identification of suitable retrofit measures across different contexts. By examining the problems and strategies in this field, this study highlights the substantial potential of historic building energy retrofit and provides a basis for future evaluation and decision-making.

Zen is belongs to the Buddhism of mental perception and also great wisdom of seeking natural character by keeping peaceful. Zen lays emphasis on the Magyar and seeks confirmation of wisdom liberation. After the Tang Dynasty, it stepped into a period of great prosperity gradually and played an important role in the Chinese ancient philosophy, literature, art and so on. As a form of art in Chinese culture, gardens are not only influenced by the traditional Confucian rite and music culture but also, in some sense, inherits the pursuit of Zen philosophy and even creates a special type of Zen garden. Zen garden is one type of temple gardens and also an ancient, special and independent garden system, because it's out of range of religious gardens. Although from China, it matured in Japan. The impact performs in regards of Japan life and religious activities. It triggered Japanese tea ceremony and the appreciation of the simple and unadorned style, emphasizing extremely strong self-control. As it were, Zen is the soul of Japanese garden. Japanese rock garden and earth-bare garden, which have the most special Japanese characteristics, are strongly infiltrated by Zen thought. At the same time, the suitable plant landscape expresses the refinements of Zen in a unadorned and simple style.

The Heilongjiang River Basin (HRB), the largest cold river basin in northern China, exhibits a complex and regionally distinct settlement system. However, its intermediate-level regional typology remains underexplored, necessitating a systematic analysis of settlement distribution, spatial clustering, and morphological evolution. This article constructs a geographic information database of historical settlement sites in the HRB based on settlement inventories derived from cultural relic census records and regional archeological survey data. This study employs a structured spatiotemporal framework encompassing three distinct geographical regions and spanning four archaeological periods to examine the distribution characteristics of settlement sites. By integrating data from archeological excavations of selected sites, the research elucidates the regional typologies and morphological evolution of historical settlements in the basin, revealing their development principles and unique regional attributes. The findings indicate that the spatial distribution of historical settlement sites in the HRB presents distinct regional characteristics. The Sanjiang plain, the presence of ring-trench settlements, and the Yi-Luo city during the Han–Wei period (206 BCE – 420 CE) reflect a transitional phase from settlements to urban centers. In the Mudanjiang River Basin, the Bohai kingdom period is characterized by large-scale capital cities, a multi-capital system, and a comprehensive transportation network, forming a hierarchical urban system. The Songnen plain inherits the urban forms of the Bohai kingdom (698 – 926) as well as the Liao (916 – 1125) and Jin (1115 – 1234) dynasties, marked by the double-city connected capital pattern and standardized garrison settlements. Overall, historical settlements in the HRB exhibit prominent military defense attributes, simplified architectural forms, and regional differentiation. These characteristics provide valuable insights into the evolution of historical settlement patterns in Northeast China.