Climate-Responsive Green-Space Design Inspired by Traditional Gardens: Microclimate and Human Thermal Comfort of Japanese Gardens

Abstract

Urban green spaces can provide relaxation, exercise, social interaction, and many other benefits for their communities, towns, and cities. However, green spaces in hot and humid regions risk being underutilized by residents unless thermal environments are designed to be sufficiently comfortable. Understanding what conditions are needed for comfortable outdoor spaces, particularly how people feel in regard to their thermal environment, is vital in designing spaces for public use. Traditional gardens are excellent examples of successful microclimate design from which we can learn, as they are developed over the generations through observation and modification. This study analyzed how Japanese gardens affect people’s thermal stress on extremely hot summer days. Meteorological data was collected in three Japanese gardens, and human thermal comfort was evaluated through physiological equivalent temperature (PET). Statistical analysis examined the relationship between spatial configurations of the gardens and thermal comfort. Our study revealed that Japanese gardens can efficiently ameliorate thermal stress. Spatial analysis showed that garden elements affect thermal comfort variously depending on time of the day and spatial distribution.

Implementation of a solar model and shadow plotting in the context of a 2D GIS

“…To highlight this correlation, we have chosen to represent in red, on the map on the left-hand side of Figure 3, all the sensors whose pyranometry measurement directed towards the sky is higher than 200 W/m 2 . This value, assumed here as a hypothesis, has been stated as the threshold for encouraging staying activities in the public space during summer; which is related to thermally comfortable situations (Cui et al, 2021). In contrast, in the plot on the right-hand side of Figure 3, the horizontal segments in red represent positions in the sun in the simulation plane located at a height of 1.10 m and those in blue are associated with positions in the shade.…”

Research on the Application of Traditional Culture in Modern Landscape Architecture Design under the Background of Artificial Intelligence

“…Landscape design is in the designated geographical scope, through the combination of artistic and technical means to the relationship between nature, architecture, and human activities to deal with and transform the terrain in order to build a pleasing garden landscape [1][2][3] in which the artistic design is dependent on the designer's artistic design ability, but in the actual project, the artistic design and technical means can not be well combined, therefore, leading to a series of problems [4][5][6]. Artificial intelligence is a new technical science that researches and develops theories, methods, technologies, and application systems for simulating, extending, and expanding human intelligence.…”