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Buildings
Special Issues
Sustainable Architecture and Healthy Environment
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Sustainable Architecture and Healthy Environment

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 July 2026 | Viewed by 617

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Xueyan Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, China
Interests: heat transfer performance of building envelopes; thermal application of biomass energy; healthy indoor environment; sustainable architecture; diffusion mechanism of PM2.5
Prof. Dr. Shui Yu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Shenyang Jianzhu University, Shenyang 110168, China
Interests: the theory and technology of heat and mass transfer; sustainable and green eco-building technology; indoor air quality guarantee technology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jiayin Zhu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
Interests: energy-saving design; ultra-low energy buildings; thermal response characteristics and energy consumption analysis of rural residential buildings; healthy residential environment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on the multi-energy coupling theory of sustainable architecture and the mechanisms of creating a healthy indoor environment. Different energy conversion and quality assurance technologies can be utilized to achieve the goal of a green, healthy, and comfortable indoor environment.

We welcome papers on the following topics:

  • Energy efficiency improvement methods for comprehensive utilization of low-carbon energy;
  • Dynamic response between energy application and building energy efficiency;
  • Goal and optimization for creating a comfortable and healthy indoor environment in buildings;
  • Indoor environment prediction models and health assessment for residential buildings.

Dr. Xueyan Zhang
Prof. Dr. Shui Yu
Dr. Jiayin Zhu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • heat transfer performance of building envelopes
  • building thermal engineering
  • thermal application of biomass energy
  • healthy indoor environment
  • energy conversion and utilization technology
  • green and sustainable ecological building technology
  • indoor environmental air quality

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

25 pages, 2608 KB  
Article
Optimization on Ventilation Time in Winter Based on Energy, Thermal Comfortable and Air Quality in Severe Cold Rural Dwellings of Northeast China
by Xueyan Zhang, Xingkuo Zhang, Yiming Yang and Jing Li
Buildings 2025, 15(20), 3718; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15203718 - 15 Oct 2025
Viewed by 225
Abstract
In Northeast China’s severe cold regions, increasingly airtight rural dwellings face a critical challenge: traditional biomass-fueled heating and cooking generate severe indoor particulate matter (PM) pollution, creating a sharp trade-off between maintaining thermal comfort and ensuring safe indoor air quality through ventilation. While [...] Read more.
In Northeast China’s severe cold regions, increasingly airtight rural dwellings face a critical challenge: traditional biomass-fueled heating and cooking generate severe indoor particulate matter (PM) pollution, creating a sharp trade-off between maintaining thermal comfort and ensuring safe indoor air quality through ventilation. While multi-objective optimization is widely applied to urban buildings, its use to develop practical, behavior-based ventilation strategies for resource-constrained rural dwellings in this context represents a significant research gap. This study integrates field measurements of occupant behavior and environmental parameters from 192 households with a coupled thermal-PM2.5 predictive model. The NSGA-II genetic algorithm was employed to perform a multi-objective optimization, balancing PM reduction against thermal comfort. The optimization reveals that short, high-intensity ventilation bursts are allowed. A typical optimized event can reduce post-cooking PM2.5 concentrations to near-guideline levels while maintaining the indoor temperature within the residents’ adaptive comfort zone. This research provides the first evidence-based, region-specific natural ventilation guidelines for these dwellings. The findings offer a practical, no-cost strategy to mitigate health risks from indoor air pollution without significant energy penalties, providing a theoretical basis for future smart ventilation system design. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Architecture and Healthy Environment)
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22 pages, 2866 KB  
Article
Quantifying the Impact of Energy Storage Capacity on Building Energy Flexibility: A Case Study of the PV-ESS-GSHP System
by Fuhong Han and Shui Yu
Buildings 2025, 15(19), 3536; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15193536 - 1 Oct 2025
Viewed by 306
Abstract
Demand-side management has been demonstrated as an efficient and feasible method to unlock the flexibility on the demand side and support the flexible regulation of power systems. In integrated energy systems (IES) of buildings, through energy storage systems (ESS) and demand response methods, [...] Read more.
Demand-side management has been demonstrated as an efficient and feasible method to unlock the flexibility on the demand side and support the flexible regulation of power systems. In integrated energy systems (IES) of buildings, through energy storage systems (ESS) and demand response methods, the utilization rate of renewable energy can be effectively improved, and the stability of the grid can be enhanced. However, the traditional energy usage methods of IES have limited responsiveness to the power system. Moreover, existing flexible energy usage strategies based on demand response rarely consider the impact of ESS in IES on energy usage strategies. Addressing the aforementioned issues, this paper proposes a flexible energy usage strategy based on ESS and demand-side management. This strategy takes into account the daily energy production and consumption of IES, as well as the relationship between user load and the grid, forming a hierarchical scheduling mechanism for energy usage. To fully explore the impact of ESS capacity on flexible energy usage scheduling strategies, the scheduling role of ESS is quantified in terms of photovoltaic utilization rate, responsiveness, and overall cost. The results indicate that implementing the flexible energy scheduling strategy in the system increases the annual PV self-consumption by 35.29%. With higher ESS capacity, the PV self-consumption rate (SCR) can be maximized, improving by up to 4.07%. The system’s response capability is enhanced after adopting the scheduling strategy and improves further with increasing ESS capacity. Regarding costs, although applying this strategy leads to a rise in ESS operational loss costs during its functioning phase, the overall system costs decrease by approximately 65.13%, with a capacity-based variation of about 1.48%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Architecture and Healthy Environment)
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