The development of Chinese ancient architectural design has gone through three historical stages: primitive society, slave society, and feudal society. Due to the influence of geography, the environment, and the humanities, regional architectural styles of each region were also formed. In particular, this is reflected in the residential architecture. Among residential architectures, the courtyard architectural style is the most typical, adapting to the microclimate and improving the comfort of living. This enclosed style of architecture was accompanied by the diffusion of Chinese culture and enriched the architectural design of the East Asian region. Nonetheless, as urbanization accelerated, this traditional style of architecture began to be undermined. In addition, there is less discussion of the architectural content that embodies design ideas in terms of ritual, order, form, components, and color. In order to preserve this precious built environment, this study highlights the design style and its connotations. Through the use of case studies, the stylistic characteristics of a traditional dwelling in Northern China, and the restoration process are assessed. Furthermore, observations on key building components, construction techniques, and materials are made in terms of architectural ideas. This leads to the proposition that conservation strategies should be appropriate to local conditions. The findings show that building restoration can contribute to the effective conservation of traditional building forms and provide an opportunity to inherit traditional culture. Moreover, it is more conducive to the presence of Chinese residential architecture that shines in the world discourse. New perspectives and contributions are offered to the fields of architectural design and conservation.

Shopping malls may be considered as controversial structures since they sometimes fail to comply with the expectations of the project stakeholders throughout the project life cycle. New mall projects often attract the attention of people since such a structure has a potential to reshape the neighborhood it is located in. On the other hand, the parties involved in mall projects may be subject to criticism from both the public and the industry during the project's design, construction, and operation. In this study we conducted semi-structured interviews with five managers of an international company that provides real estate services worldwide and mainly focuses on managing shopping centers within the context of Turkiye. During the interviews, we collected insights on shopping mall design and criteria that have an impact on the operational success and/or failure of mall projects. We analyzed the interview data to understand the shopping mall design requirements from the experts’ perspectives. The analyzed data indicate that the requirements and uses of shopping malls evolve and change over time. This change is driven by factors such as the changing habits and expectations of the users and new marketing approaches. Understanding such changes is essential for designers and investors to propose new design approaches and space compositions in order to be able to adapt to the changes. Through our analysis of the collected data, we identified and categorized the design requirements of shopping malls and provided experts’ insight on new trends that affect mall designs. We formalized design characteristics of shopping malls and concluded with a proposed design, construction, and operations methodology for new shopping mall designs which encourages improved collaboration and communication between all the project stakeholders. The design criteria provided in this study may be useful for evaluating future mall designs.

Shopping malls have been a significant part of our daily life for decades. Their significance is derived from the use of these spaces based on great numbers of people, as well as the role malls play in culture. On the other hand, the design of malls has been constantly evolving according to the needs of users and the market. This study is based on survey data that we collected from ninety visitors of a shopping mall located in Izmir, Turkiye. Through the survey, we collected data on topics such as the participants’ frequency and reasons for visiting the mall, architectural and spatial features they favor and/or dislike, their opinions on where they perceive malls in everyday life, and their opinions on alternative spaces to malls. The data collection was finalized right before the pandemic which significantly changed the way we think about public spaces, as well as malls, in relation to architecture. Analyzing collected data provides further insight on surveyed customers’ perception of spaces, the design of shopping malls, the use of the space, the preferred design features, as well as design features that drive customers away from the mall. The analysis is later compared and linked to studies in the literature. These research findings have the potential to be used by studies that evaluate mall design and space use, as well as by studies that compare the post-pandemic perception of spaces and the use of shopping malls.

Yan Garden has a history of more than 400 years since it was built in the early Ming dynasty. Taking Yan Garden as the research object, this paper mainly explores the evolution process of the campus space planning and architectural style of Yan Garden since 1919. Combined with this process, it analyzes the impact and significance of intervention among architects, as well as the requirements of users on the architecture and space planning of Yan Garden reflected in the spatial organization, axis and orientation, cultural symbols, and architectural styles of campus planning following Eastern and Western cultural integration.

The layout of the Yan Garden in the early stage greatly reflects the personal will of the architect. With the move of Peking University, in the new era, due to the increase in the number and types of users, the boundaries of Yan Garden continued to expand outwards and spontaneously generated new campus spatial axes and dynamic areas. They then connected the independent buildings into an organic whole, which shows the concerns for users’ needs instead of architect’s individual will and the significance of people in campus planning. The increase in user autonomy in campus planning enhances interaction between people, space, and information. The connection and integration of spaces with different functions fully reflect the user's own needs, allowing a dynamic and harmonious campus environment to be built and a harmonious coexistence between people and the campus to be achieved.

In the context of future challenges, concrete 3D printing is seen as a key technology for transforming the construction industry. Concrete 3D printing not only offers new architectural freedoms or the functionalization of buildings, but also the opportunity to transform the usually linear planning and construction process through the digital fabrication of material-efficient components. In the case of 3D-printed buildings to date, the application of concrete 3D printing is predominantly focused on the fabrication of walls and therefore only represents a small part of the overall context of a construction project with regard to required ceilings; structural connections; windows and doors; or electrical, sanitary, or air-conditioning systems. For concrete 3D printing, however, to benefit from the automated fabrication, those subsequent (manual) fabrication and assembly processes need to be taken into account at an early stage in the 3D-printing design process. This leads to implications of concrete 3D printing on project delivery that have hardly been investigated so far with regard to project organization, responsibilities, or decision points. For this purpose, a literature review was carried out in order to record the previous findings on the implications of concrete 3D printing on project delivery. The aim of the study is to question the need for alternative project delivery methods. The results indicate that the traditional planning and construction process will continue to be valid in principle. However, on the one hand, new roles and changes in responsibilities may emerge, and, on the other hand, in comparison to the traditional project delivery, a holistic design process and an early contractor involvement will be required in order to fully exploit the potential of concrete 3D printing. Therefore, for concrete 3D printing to become more integrated in the future, it could be necessary to adopt alternative and cooperative project delivery models.

In the field of technological construction tools, the 360-degree panorama provides a panoramic virtual reality capable of representing the construction environment in great detail. While there are many studies on their pedagogical and safety applications, few studies address the benefits of their use in construction monitoring and control. For this reason, the present research aims to explore its application and benefits for monitoring and control, the research for which begins with a literature review on the application of 360-degree panorama in construction, where the authors identified the main benefits. In the second stage, the authors analyzed two case studies of its application: the first is based on the construction of a retail project and the second is based on an educational infrastructure project. After the implementation, the researchers conducted interviews with the team members responsible for implementing the 360-degree panorama. The main benefits of the 360-degtee panorama are as follows: a complete overview of the construction site situation, verification of the distribution of the space used, documentation of the current project situations, as well as progress control and quality control. The results help to improve the understanding of this tool's current state of the art in the construction field and open the door to future investigations on cost—benefit analysis that facilitate the application of this tool in construction sites.

Maintenance decisions at the end of building components’ service life are frequently driven by subjective motivations. Subjective motivations can arise from various sources, including the building owner’s personal preferences, sentimental attachments, aesthetic considerations and individual/collective preferences or sense of taste. It is important to acknowledge that subjective motivations for maintenance decisions, beyond technical requirements, hold value as they reflect the human element and emotional connections associated with buildings. Balancing these subjective motivations with technical considerations (e.g., original design intent) and financial constraints is essential for making well-informed decisions that address both practical needs and emotional connections. In this study, a digital model is proposed to assess the degradation state of buildings’ coatings, based on in situ inspections (using robotized platforms and a high-resolution camera), while engaging the building's occupants, tenants, or users to understand their perceptions, experiences, and concerns regarding the building’s condition. A stains’ detection algorithm, using multispectral analysis, is developed to identify the area affected by stains (a visible sign of degradation), which affect the facade’s aesthetic appearance but also contribute to the worsening of other anomalies and consequent degradation and loss of properties of the coating. This study enables the identification of patterns, correlations, and discrepancies between objective degradation indicators and subjective user feedback. The dwellers’ feelings are modelled based on onsite interviews to collect qualitative data on their observations and satisfaction levels. This study supports decision making regarding maintenance actions by combining objective indicators of building degradation and the subjective user perceptions to prioritize areas of focus, determine appropriate maintenance strategies, and allocate resources effectively.

Modern research is increasingly focused on the use of sustainable materials in concrete to increase its
mechanical properties in order to enhance its performance for different applications. Banana leaf ash has great potential to increase the compressive strength of concrete whereas banana fiber has been reported to increase the tensile strength. Therefore, the combined effect of both these materials in concrete needs to be elaborated. This experimental study investigates the influence of a 1.5% proportion of banana fiber and partial replacement of cement with banana leaf ash (10%) on the mechanical properties of concrete. Compressive testing and split tensile testing are employed. The results of this study demonstrate that the inclusion of banana fibers and banana leaf ash results in decreased compressive strength and increased tensile strength. The decrease in compressive strength for FRC is 9.18%. On the other hand, the increase in tensile strength for fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) against plain concrete (PC) is 12.31%. The study provides valuable insights into the potential of banana-based additives in enhancing the performance of concrete, offering an eco-friendly approach for sustainable construction practices.

In the real estate market, multi-parametric valuation methods are particularly useful to understand and define all the factors that contribute to the formation of market prices, involving both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Location is arguably one of the most important (if not the most important) feature the market value of a property depends on. However, other buildings feature also influence the price formation mechanism. In the field of property valuation, this study aims to discuss the contribution of intrinsic versus extrinsic features of the buildings in the assessment of properties' prices. The scope of the study is to examine how, and to what extent, fixed effects determine the best estimate of the market value of a building, especially in comparison to construction characteristics, by means of a multi-parametric econometric analysis. An econometric market value assessment application, in fact, is able to determine the relationship that relates some features describing the property (the independent variables) and its market value (the dependent variable). The marginal appreciation of buildings' characteristics is explored by means of a Random Forest feature selection process and a Multiple Regression analysis. The results of this research also reflect the changes in the real estate market that have occurred in response to anomalous events in recent years, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the War in Ukraine, and the increase in the costs of construction. The analysis is applied for an exemplary case study in Northern Italy.

Project planners are faced with a great challenge in determining the number of resources to use on a construction project. Therefore, the efficient planning of construction operations is deemed necessary to meet a project's objectives. Stochastic simulation optimization, which is the combination of stomachic simulation with optimization algorithms, has been proposed by several researchers to optimize construction operations. Traditionally, explicit averaging is used to estimate the objective functions of candidate solutions. This is carried out by calculating the average estimates of the objective functions obtained from a number of simulation replications. However, the computation effort increases as the number of replications and the size of the search space increase. The main objectives of this research are to improve the quality of the optimum solutions while reducing the computation efforts. To achieve that, this study investigates the feasibility of applying implicit averaging in construction simulation optimization problems. Implicit averaging refers to using a single simulation replication to estimate the objective functions. Using this method, the optimization algorithm will be able to evaluate a larger number of candidate solutions compared to explicit averaging in a finite period of time. This research's anticipated benefits include reducing the computation time and improving the quality of the optimal solutions. The initial results show promising advantages of using implicit averaging over explicit averaging.