As the material product of socialist construction activities, the socialist built heritage (SBH) represents socialist-era achievements and has unique cultural value. However, political controversy and inadequate conservation awareness have produced an unprecedented crisis. The aim of this study was to draw worldwide attention to the value of SBH to promote future conservation. Taking the socialist country of China as a representative example, the spatial distribution and spatial–temporal evolution of SBH during the Socialist Revolution and Construction Period (1949–1978) were explored using GIS analysis tools from typological and holistic perspectives. A geographic detector was also applied to reveal the driving factors that affected the distribution. The results indicate that (1) from both perspectives, the SBH presented uneven and clustering distributions compared with other heritages. High-density areas varied by heritage type but were virtually nonexistent in western and northwestern China. (2) Growth stages existed to different degrees for most types and the holistic SBH, primarily from 1953 to 1965. The centers of military heritage, industrial heritage, transport heritage, and the holistic SBH all exhibited north-to-south migration with narrowing and clustering of range areas. Cities such as Beijing were identified as hotspots. (3) GDP, financial revenue and capital investment constituted the major positive driving factors for the SBH distribution and interacted with other factors, with average altitude ∩ GDP having the strongest interpretation. These findings reveal the spatial–temporal distribution characteristics of Chinese SBH and provide concrete guidance and positive foundations for future conservation in China and the world.

The physical environment of classrooms has a strong relationship with student learning performance and health. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019, almost all universities have begun implementing closed instructional management, which has forced students to spend a much longer amount of time inside the classroom. This has also led to an increasing problem of thermal comfort in classroom indoor environments. In this paper, classrooms evolved from three dominant teaching modes at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (ZSTU), located in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter (HSCW) zone of China, were selected as experimental spaces. Meanwhile, 12 learning groups with 60 students (30 of each sex) were selected as the tested samples. The relationship between thermal comfort and learning efficiency of the tested students was established through thermal comfort questionnaires and learning efficiency tests under the typical natural conditions in transition seasons. Based on this, improvement strategies were proposed for the current state of the classroom environment, providing a database for optimizing the environmental conditions of university classrooms in HSCW zone on the basis of improving students’ learning efficiency.

Along with the rapid urbanization and economic growth of China over the past decades, the thermal comfort needs of the people in this region have risen dramatically, and at the same time, promoting building energy efficiency is cited as part of the major projects in the 14th five-year plan for energy efficiency improvement. In addition, the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has plunged people into long-term panic, and promoted the entire construction industry to think about a healthier and more sustainable living environment. To respond to the imbalance between energy supply and demand, an optimization analysis based on energy use is developed, assessing the energy efficiency of the window-to-wall ratio (WWR) design and calculating the energy consumption of three different types of residential buildings for both cooling and heating loads as well as for year-round loads. Owing to its harsh climate and huge energy consumption, in this study, the Hot-summer and Cold-winter (HSCW) zone of China was chosen as the experimental setting for the optimization analysis of WWR. Then, in the three main types of residential buildings, including detached houses, multi-story dwellings and high-rise dwellings, a correlation between WWR_S and energy consumption in the cooling season, heating season and year-round was built. The comparisons between the WWR_S and energy consumption for different types of residential buildings are presented. The design optimization recommendation for WWR_S are proposed. It has significant positive meanings for the development of green and sustainably designed residential buildings that offer high levels of thermal comfort and energy efficiency.

The socialist built heritage (SBH) is a product of the great and typical socialist construction and is considered to be one of the unique contemporary legacies. However, due to political controversy and a shorter history, its conservation status is dire. In order to better understand and promote future conservation, this study explored the typology and evolution of SBH, using representative socialist China as an example. Based on the official People’s Daily, the spatial term database of various socialist construction fields was generated by utilizing Python and Excel software. Through qualitative logical induction and quantitative word frequency statistics, the basic types and evolutionary characteristics of SBH were obtained. It was found that (1) the composite, multiscale, and extensive SBH were identified as twenty-six basic types. It was most widespread in the industry and agroforestry fields, while factories and facilities, collective organization buildings, government agencies, and assembly buildings were the most common basic types. (2) Related to social development, the fastest growth stage for SBH was from 1953 to 1960 and vice versa from 1966 to 1975. The evolution of SBH in technology field shifted from a non-significant increase to a sudden increase, while those in the finance and trade, and diplomacy fields fluctuated. The remaining fields were marked by large fluctuations to smoothness. The nature of SBH has become more modernized over time. These results further illustrated the distinctive value of the SBH, and can provide positive targeted support for their conservation.