Ventilation-orientated design of public building in a full-phase and multi-scale method: A case study of community service center design

With energy crisis emerging as common concern, the development of energy-saving technologies for natural ventilation is significant in cooling, moisture prevention, and improving indoor air quality. Previous studies on ventilation-oriented design have typically focused on the application of simplified models and have been limited to single-scale climatic conditions and specific design problems. However, the sufficient ventilation-orientated building design requires integrated multi-scale use across full phases. Therefore, this study proposes a multi-scale ventilation-orientated public building design methodology that combines the progressive design method with WRF–CFD three-domain nested ventilation simulation method. Additionally, appropriate evaluation criteria were set for each design phase. To determine whether this methodology works effectively, this study selects the community service center located in Nanjing, China, as a case. The results show that the multi-scale ventilation-oriented design method can substantially enhance the building's ventilation efficiency with a cumulative improvement score of 1.3. Combined consideration of all phases of ventilation optimization is better than single-phase consideration to improve natural ventilation performance. In addition, WRF–CFD three-domain nested simulation method provides more convincing data of wind environment conditions. This framework can inform building practice with multi-scale ventilation design as a reference and further facilitate the overall urban microclimate environment.