Traditional Architectural Heritage Conservation and Green Renovation with Eco Materials: Design Strategy and Field Practice in Cultural Tibetan Town

Abstract

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.