With the continuous implementation of a plan for reconstruction of “Beautiful Countryside” in China, the rural environment and appearance of rural houses have been significantly improved. However, those houses in cold areas of China have great trouble with indoor temperature and heating-related energy consumption. After investigating the current situation of the layout, building envelope, indoor temperature, and energy consumption of the rural houses renovated by the plan of “Beautiful Countryside” in Shandong Province, this paper puts forward the improvement measures of raising indoor temperature and reducing energy consumption. On this basis, a typical rural house was selected, and DesignBuilder was utilized to simulate the effects before and after the application of different renovation measures for this house. The results show that the main way to raise indoor temperature and reduce energy consumption is to improve the thermal insulation performance of the building envelope, including renovation of the roof, exterior walls, doors and windows, and attached sunspace. In addition, combined with the achievements of “Beautiful Countryside” reconstruction, this paper shall propose specific renovation practices which are suitable for different rural houses. Based on the level of economic development in rural areas, it also puts forward some feasible renovation paths for different rural areas, and further provides references for other areas to carry out relevant work in the future.

In recent years, due to the advantages of high construction efficiency and less environmental pollution, prefabricated housing has been of increasing interest and vigorously promoted. However at present, most prefabricated houses simply pursue an increase in assembly rate, and the floor plan design still continues to follow the traditional design method of housing, which does not meet the requirements of industrialization and cannot achieve the goal of product diversification. This paper puts forward a method for floor plan designs of prefabricated houses whose core is building plane module libraries. The modules in module libraries all conform to standardized and refined designs. A new residential floor plan can be obtained by selecting and recombining modules in module libraries. The richer the module library, the more diverse the results will be under the same combinatorial logic, which can greatly improve design efficiency. In addition, this paper probes the method of creation and applications of plane module libraries in detail, so as to provide a new idea for floor plan designs of prefabricated houses. This research is of great significance for improving the efficiency of floor plan design of prefabricated housing and realizing goals of standardization and diversification of prefabricated housing development.

With the vigorous promotion of the development and construction of “beautiful countryside” in China, the irrationality of the functional space of rural farmhouses and the energy conservation and consumption reduction of farmhouses have become urgent problems. In this paper, the design practice of a green agricultural house with prefabricated steel structure in Shandong province was taken as an example. Based on a variety of factors such as environmental characteristics, regional characteristics, and technical conditions, design and application research were conducted from the aspects of building shape and functional space design, appropriate green building technology. What’s more, the energy consumption simulation software was used for its quantitative analysis of energy saving effects and indoor temperature, and a green farm house design strategy adapted to the characteristics of cold climate, regional characteristics, and future development trends was discussed, which was intended to provide a technical reference for the construction of beautiful countryside.