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Enhancing Occupant Comfort: A Sustainable Building Internal Design (SBID) Approach to Alleviating Summer Indoor Discomfort in Urban Villages of Wenzhou, China

Mu Tiantian1, Nordin Jestin1, Aziz Nor Fadzila1
1School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.70517/revcc2624145
Published: 13/10/2026
: Mu Tiantian, Nordin Jestin, Aziz Nor Fadzila. Enhancing Occupant Comfort: A Sustainable Building Internal Design (SBID) Approach to Alleviating Summer Indoor Discomfort in Urban Villages of Wenzhou, China. Revista Cultura Científica, 2026 Issue 24. pg. 1755-1769.

Abstract

Urban villages are a distinctive spatial phenomenon in rapidly urbanising Chinese cities. In Wenzhou, a humid-subtropical coastal city, densely built urban-village dwellings suffer severe summer indoor overheating, yet most renovation strategies in the literature remain at policy, management, or large-scale demolition levels rather than addressing the dwellings themselves. This study proposes a Sustainable Building Internal Design (SBID) framework that prioritises interventions within the building envelope and interior layout, drawing on the passive climatic logic of Wenzhou’s vernacular architecture. Three parallel objectives guide the work: (O1) identify the envelope and interior-layout aspects that drive summer indoor overheating in Wuma Street urban-village dwellings; (O2) document the climate-adaptive strategies embedded in Wenzhou vernacular architecture from an SBID perspective; and (O3) assess the effectiveness of SBID interventions in mitigating summer indoor overheating through calibrated building performance simulation. The study adopts a sequential mixed-methods design comprising (i) field survey and observational assessment of ten households in the Wuma Street urban-village cluster in Lucheng District, Wenzhou; (ii) on-site indoor environmental monitoring of representative dwellings during summer 2024; and (iii) calibrated EnergyPlus / DesignBuilder simulations of five SBID retrofit scenarios (V1–V5) against an as-found baseline (V0). The reported results indicate that combining vernacular-inspired envelope treatments (deep eaves, high-albedo lime render, ventilated double-skin construction) with interior layout reconfiguration significantly reduces summer indoor overheating hours and improves indoor thermal conditions with the aim of limiting cost and disruption to residents. The study presents an operational SBID framework, a set of evidence-informed design guidelines for subtropical urban-village retrofit, and a replicable empirical dataset for future research.

Keywords: urban village; sustainable building internal design (SBID); indoor thermal comfort; vernacular architecture; building performance simulation; energy-efficient retrofit

Abstract

Urban villages are a distinctive spatial phenomenon in rapidly urbanising Chinese cities. In Wenzhou, a humid-subtropical coastal city, densely built urban-village dwellings suffer severe summer indoor overheating, yet most renovation strategies in the literature remain at policy, management, or large-scale demolition levels rather than addressing the dwellings themselves. This study proposes a Sustainable Building Internal Design (SBID) framework that prioritises interventions within the building envelope and interior layout, drawing on the passive climatic logic of Wenzhou’s vernacular architecture. Three parallel objectives guide the work: (O1) identify the envelope and interior-layout aspects that drive summer indoor overheating in Wuma Street urban-village dwellings; (O2) document the climate-adaptive strategies embedded in Wenzhou vernacular architecture from an SBID perspective; and (O3) assess the effectiveness of SBID interventions in mitigating summer indoor overheating through calibrated building performance simulation. The study adopts a sequential mixed-methods design comprising (i) field survey and observational assessment of ten households in the Wuma Street urban-village cluster in Lucheng District, Wenzhou; (ii) on-site indoor environmental monitoring of representative dwellings during summer 2024; and (iii) calibrated EnergyPlus / DesignBuilder simulations of five SBID retrofit scenarios (V1–V5) against an as-found baseline (V0). The reported results indicate that combining vernacular-inspired envelope treatments (deep eaves, high-albedo lime render, ventilated double-skin construction) with interior layout reconfiguration significantly reduces summer indoor overheating hours and improves indoor thermal conditions with the aim of limiting cost and disruption to residents. The study presents an operational SBID framework, a set of evidence-informed design guidelines for subtropical urban-village retrofit, and a replicable empirical dataset for future research.

Keywords: urban village; sustainable building internal design (SBID); indoor thermal comfort; vernacular architecture; building performance simulation; energy-efficient retrofit

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Mu Tiantian
School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia
Nordin Jestin
School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia
mutiantian@student.usm.my
Aziz Nor Fadzila
School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 Penang, Malaysia

How to cite:

Mu Tiantian, Nordin Jestin, Aziz Nor Fadzila. Enhancing Occupant Comfort: A Sustainable Building Internal Design (SBID) Approach to Alleviating Summer Indoor Discomfort in Urban Villages of Wenzhou, China. Revista Cultura Científica, 2026 Issue 24. pg. 1755-1769.

Publication History

  • Received: 14/06/2026
  • Accepted: 21/09/2026
  • Published: 13/10/2026
Copyright © 2026, Mu Tiantian, Nordin Jestin, Aziz Nor Fadzila. Published by Revista Cultura Científica. This article is published as open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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