With the massive urbanization and industrialization in China, the paradox between fast modernization and cultural preservation arouses challenges on new insight into green construction and sustainable development strategies throughout the nation. Particularly, how to strike a balanced cultural–modern rural revitalization has become a research priority, especially for cultural and historical villages in relatively under developed western regions. In this paper, taking Gaotunzi Village, a traditional ethnic village in western high-altitude plateau as an illustrative example, the typical green design manner and optimization strategy are proposed for cultural and architectural heritage preservation. The detailed architecture and structure design is conducted for both old temple retrofitting and new museum construction, with consideration for retaining traditional building colors, styles, and materials. Moreover, land use planning is demonstrated for local public space and services upgrading. The overall design strategy has been taken into practice for the local renovation construction program. The preliminary results indicate that this green retrofitting idea and approach are quite locally feasible for sustainable rural revitalization with local heritage conservation, including traditional wooden buildings, Buddhism belief, Tibetan icons, and ethnic symbolic culture preservation and promotion. This work can provide a typical design reference and application prototype for rural construction and modernization with local heritage preservation considerations, especially for those traditional villages in developing countries.

With the rapid advancement of rural revitalization in China, protecting regional culture and construction techniques of traditional ethnic groups, while incorporating green energy-saving concepts, has become increasingly vital. With Sware ITES2023 as the simulation tool, this article conducts a comparative study on the green building technology and thermal comfort of traditional Tibetan residential houses in Songpan, Sichuan Province, and the new residential houses that villagers have incessantly renovated and built in the past two decades, thus demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages of traditional houses and newly-built houses in terms of green building technology elements, such as stone and wood structures, roof floors, walls, doors, and windows, therefore developing an optimized design scheme, which includes the eastern direction of a building’s orientation, concrete frame and wooden structure, brick wall and stone masonry, and optimized door and window size selection. This scheme will improve indoor thermal comfort by two to three times by calculation. Through preliminary simulation and deduction, the optimized design scheme combines traditional architectural culture and ethnic characteristics with green and energy-saving concepts. This provides a design paradigm that can be promoted and popularized for the construction of residential buildings in high-altitude ethnic areas of western Sichuan and also lays the foundation for future protection and research of traditional residential architecture.

This paper aims to study the required solar panel tilt angle, area, and investment payback period for achieving zero-energy heating in historically significant courtyard-style residential buildings. The retrofitting approach involves positioning solar panels on the main building of the structure using four supports, each located at the corners, elevated from the ground and not in direct contact with the building. This approach does not alter the external envelope structure of the building, thereby preserving the authenticity of the cultural heritage. Using BESI software, we simulated the heating energy demand of the sample building. We integrated a solar heating system within the building and analyzed the optimal solar panel layout area, installation angle, and payback period for achieving zero-energy heating. This allowed the building to meet the zero-energy heating requirements. Taking the Hu Family Courtyard heritage conservation building as an example, we proposed the optimal layout plan for solar energy retrofitting.

Due to massive urbanization and industrialization, modern constructions tend to be designed as technique-dependent, at the cost of high consumption and emissions for indoor environment control such as heating ventilation and air conditioning. Space heating accounts for about 40% of total building energy usage in northern China in winter. This calls for self-reflection and tracing of local traditional architectural wisdom. In this paper, Sibe Traditional Houses were chosen as a typical illustrative example to reveal the building mechanisms behind such local-adaptive traditional constructions. Based on the field investigation in Shifosi Village, a traditional Sibe settlement in Shenyang City, northern China, thermal modeling and indoor heating effects are studied in Sibe Traditional Houses with unique building spatial patterns. The indoor thermal environment is comparatively analyzed for both passive envelope insulation and active heating considerations. Preliminary results indicate that enhancing roof thermal insulation enhancement is the key passive strategy for improving indoor thermal comfort in winter. It also suggests that a space-heating configuration that combines the traditional “kang” with the architectural layout has a more significant effect on the enhancement of indoor thermal comfort in Sibe dwellings. This paper can provide methodological support and an application reference for the improvement of indoor thermal environment of traditional village dwellings.

This study innovatively integrates the AHP-TOPSIS comprehensive evaluation method the Coefficient of Determination with model construct(CF)-Random Forest(RF) toadual dimensional "value-risk" assessment framework. This enables a systematic integrated evaluation of the value and geological hazard risks asso-ciated with industrial heritage sites from the Third Front Construction. Taking Lizhou District, Guangyuan City as a case study the research first identified through heritage value quantification and geological hazard zoning, sites “high-value” sites. Subsequently on five “high-risk” “high-value” heritage, and eight “low-risk”, four categories of conservation units were delineated based the “value-risk” matrix, proposing differentiated resilience enhancement pathways. This research not only provides a basis for the scientific conservation and adap-tive reuse of Third Front heritage in Lizhou District but also offers an operational theoretical and practical paradigm for the adaptive management of industrial her-itage in similar mountainous regions.

This study develops a two-dimensional value–geological hazard susceptibility framework for the resilience-oriented conservation of Third Front industrial heritage. Heritage value is quantified using the AHP–TOPSIS method, while geological hazard susceptibility is predicted by coupling the Certainty Factor (CF) with Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and XGBoost models; model performance is evaluated using an independent test set. Using 24 Third Front industrial heritage sites in Lizhou District, Guangyuan City, as a case study, the research first classifies heritage value and assesses geological hazard susceptibility. The results indicate that CF–RF provides the most favorable overall performance among the three CF-coupled models, while hazard-site density generally increases with susceptibility class. Heritage value is then integrated with the CF–RF susceptibility results to construct a Value–Susceptibility Matrix. The 24 sites are classified into four groups—high value–high susceptibility, high value–low susceptibility, low value–high susceptibility, and low value–low susceptibility—comprising 4, 9, 5, and 6 sites, respectively. Differentiated pathways are proposed for these groups, including conservation under safety constraints, preventive conservation and adaptive reuse, limited intervention, and routine maintenance. By linking heritage value identification, geological hazard susceptibility assessment, and differentiated conservation strategies, the study provides a methodological reference for the sustainable conservation, adaptive reuse, and resilience management of Third Front industrial heritage in complex mountainous environments. The framework contributes to sustainability by supporting more efficient allocation of limited conservation resources, continued heritage use, and long-term adaptive management.