Three-dimensional urban morphology plays a role in adjusting the outdoor thermal environment while the effects of little variation in shape on outdoor thermal environment are still not evaluated. In addition, the renovation for senior people is getting more attention in China, which could be developed by installing elevators in old residential quarters. However, the evaluation of installing elevators in the perspective of outdoor thermal environment remains rare. Based on these two issues, 5 different parameters describing the three-dimensional urban morphology were chosen to simulate 4 scenarios and to analyze. Based on the results of one-way ANOVA and stepwise regression, installing elevator changed the three-dimensional shape of residential quarter, but the variation was less than 7%; temperature (Ta), mean radiation temperature (MRT), wind velocity (WV) and predictive mean vote (PMV) changed a little consequently, leading to very limited impacts on outdoor thermal qualities. The pattern of outdoor thermal environment slightly changed when installing elevators in the residential quarter, especially in the situation at night (no solar radiation). From the overall perspective of outdoor thermal environment evaluation, adding elevators in residential quarter has little effect on the threedimensional urban morphology and outdoor thermal environment.

There is a lot of research on the urban thermal environment, mainly on air temperature. However, fewer studies focus on soil temperature that is influenced by built environment, especially on the horizontal heat impacts from buildings. In this research, soil temperature was investigated at different depths in Beijing, China, to compare the differences between two locations. One was next to the building and the other was far away from the building (10 m). The locations are referred to as site A and site B, respectively. These two sites were chosen to compare the differences in soil temperatures between them to present the horizontal heat impact from facade. The results show that facades caused horizontal heat impacts on the soil at different depths in the winter, spring, and summer. Basically, facades functioned as heat sources to the soil surrounding them. The mean temperature differences between the two sites were 3.282, 4.698 and 0.316 K in the winter, spring and summer, respectively. Additionally, the thermal effects of the buildings were not only exhibited as higher soil temperatures but the temporal appearance of the maximum and minimum temperature was also influenced. Buildings functioned as heat sources to heat soil in the winter and spring and stabilized soil temperature so that it would not fluctuate too much in the summer. Additionally, the coefficient of variation indicates that buildings primarily increased the soil temperature in the winter and spring and stabilized the soil temperature in the summer.