Ghost city phenomenon along China’s high-speed railway grid

A fresh urbanism era appears in China with the development of high-speed railway (HSR). Voluminous numbers of local governments are designing and erecting novel cities oriented to the HSR stations with the objective of gaining benefits from the HSR system. Nevertheless, a huge number of these freshly erected districts or cities entail a tremendously high vacancy rate, thereby resulting in 'ghost cities'. The present paper commences with an outline of the China's urban HSR growth and the phenomena of ghost cities. After a literature review on worldwide urban HSR development, the reasons behind the 'ghost city phenomenon' in China are analysed. In the end, the study is concluded by proposing several suggestions for HSR development

The role of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and energy efficiency optimization during the early stage of building design

The environmental impact of buildings could not be minimized only by optimizing the operational energy since the reduction of operational energy frequently consumes more embodied energy due to the increase of materials and systems used for energy efficiency. Meanwhile, although LCA has been widely used to evaluate the environmental footprint, few studies explored its role in the early building design stage during which majority of the prominent decisions actually already have been made. This paper tries to offer a roadmap by incorporating LCA with energy optimization during the early design phase, to make LCA a more useful guidance tool for improving the design sustainability rather than a method only for the final verification. The workflow of integrating these two approaches is proposed. Several mainstream LCA software are compared and simplified LCA approaches are introduced for the implementation. In the same time, limitations related to this integrative work are also pointed out. For instance, the nature of design is a sequential processing work which fights against the demand of simulation software

Reflecting on the architecture curriculum through a survey on career switching

Due to the deteriorating investment environment, many real-estate companies in China have started transferring their business out of the construction industry. This leads to the shrinkage of the design market and also architects’ salary. A great number of architects have switched career to maintain the same living quality as before. Meanwhile, architectural education in China is not able to integrate itself with emerging science and technologies, losing possibilities to explore new employment channels for its graduates. There is a huge gap between qualities needed in the current or future labour market and the architectural education in schools. An online survey was conducted to investigate the current state of architects’ career shifting, trying to expose the problem mentioned above. In the second part of this paper, education missions from 50 universities are analysed and detailed education curriculums from three top universities are scrutinised. At the end, the education boundary is suggested to be reconstructed from three aspects: integrating the emerging technologies; reducing unnecessary content; and training in self-learning skills

Reduce Mould Risk during the Building Design Stage: Case Studies in Southeast China

Indoor mould is usually discussed for the building operation phase rather than the design stage. Moreover, the majority of existing studies were conducted by mechanical engineers rather than architects, who typically have a broader view of the whole project. The purpose of this paper is to obtain a quantitative mould risk scenario across the Yangtze River Delta in China and make a matrix including all the possible design chances to reduce the mould risk. A series of software is utilized to simulate the mould risk in three main cities across that region. Simulation results confirm high mould risk in all selected cities and the mould growth rates in different orientations match the Wind-Driven-Rain diagram. After the simulation, all factors that can be tuned for the mould prevention were analysed. Authors found that only humidity and substrate (material of finishing layer) characteristics can be practically controlled for the mould avoidance. Meanwhile, the Development Design Stage is the essential design phase while the envelope is the most crucial building element for mould prevention

Reflecting on the architecture curriculum through a survey on career switching

Architectural education in China was a contributor to the super-fast urbanization process during the past 20 years. However, due to the economy bubble in the construction industry, many real-estate companies started transferring investments to other fields. This lead to the shrinkage of the architecture design market and the decrease of architects’ salary. A great number of architects switched careers to maintain the same living quality as before. Meanwhile, architectural education in China is not able to integrate itself with emerging science and technologies, losing the possibilities to explore new employment channels for its graduates. An online survey is conducted to investigate the current state of architects shifting their careers, trying to analyse the feedback and exposure to the existing problems. In the second part of this paper, education curriculum from three top universities is scrutinized and the education boundary is reconstructed from three aspects: integrating the emerging technologies into the architectural curriculum; reducing unnecessary content from the teaching program; training the ability to learn. &nbsp

Using algorithms to designate pre-fabricated wall materials: A case study with two implementation methods

Designating wall materials manually is neither efficient nor competent to find the ideal solution. Therefore, the current study aims to develop a new designation approach based on multi-objective optimization which can automatically explore a larger space of solutions and obtain the optimal material combination. The core concept is to use wall properties as objectives to search for satisfying combinations, rather than the thresholds to validate manually proposed solutions. A case study is carried out to find material combinations with favourable U value, specific heat capacity, and the total material price. It is realised by two different research methods: using the k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) algorithm in the Python environment, and using the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) in the Grasshopper. Finally, the usability test was conducted among 15 architects. Test results confirmed that this new approach could save much time and find solutions with better performance. The present study has significance in reducing architects’ repetitive work while speeding up the decision-making process

Cyclin G2 Suppresses Glomerulosclerosis by Regulating Canonical Wnt Signalling

Recent data has shown that cyclin G2 (CCNG2) is an atypical cyclin that inhibits cell cycle progression and is often dysregulated in human cancers. The involvement of cyclin G2 in the occurrence and development of diabetic nephropathy (DN) has not been determined. In the present study, we conducted cyclin G2 knockout studies to determine whether this protein regulates glomerulosclerosis in DN mice. We found that cyclin G2 regulated the expression of renal glomerulosclerosis-related proteins via the canonical Wnt signalling pathway in glomerular mesangial cells. A cyclin G2 deficiency resulted in more severe renal injury in DN mice. These findings provided new insight into the pathogenesis of DN, revealing that cyclin G2 has a protective role in glomerulosclerosis and is a potential new target for the prevention and treatment of DN