A Hierarchical Approach for the Sustainability of Residential Building Regeneration

摘要

After the enormous advancement of urbanization from the past 30 years, the functional and environmental quality of a large number of existing residential buildings poses a serious challenge to the sustainability of urban living. It is of great significance to retrofit the existing residential buildings in order to improve the living quality. However, due to complexity of residential issues, retrofitting of existing residential areas is not only some simple revising and reconstructing projects of residential buildings and environments, but also multidimensional and interdisciplinary theoretic research and engineering practices. Thus, this research study, taking the residential buildings built between 1980 and 2000 in Northeast China as the research objects, attempts to systematically put forward a regenerative method that offers an overall sustainable retrofitting plan of residential buildings. This paper, starting from investigating the complex issues of existing residential buildings, summarises the contradictions between the requirements from residents and current retrofitting approaches. Then, to resolve the contradictions, hierarchical theories, such as Open Building and Shearing Layers, are introduced based on documentary analysis and case studies. And finally, a sustainable regenerative design approach is proposed to hierarchically control the qualitative and quantitative retrofitting of existing residential buildings. The findings of this research will extend and improve the role of occupants’ participation in the retrofitting of residential buildings. It can also provide methods for the achievement of the long-term effectiveness and environmental sustainability.