Natural ventilation in vernacular architecture: A systematic review of bioclimatic ventilation design and its performance evaluation

The natural ventilation strategies employed in vernacular architecture have attracted considerable research interest in the context of sustainable development, primarily due to their inherent characteristics of bioclimatic and passive design. Investigating natural ventilation in vernacular architecture entails identifying various ventilation designs and evaluating their impacts on environmental performance. However, this field currently faces challenges in prototyping vernacular design strategies and implementing suitable quantitative methods, thus necessitating a comprehensive review of relevant studies. To address this, a systematic literature review of 81 studies focusing on natural ventilation in vernacular architecture, published over the past two decades, was conducted. The results were organized into three main categories: firstly, an overview of selected studies, informed by bibliometric analysis outcomes and the categorization of research objects; secondly, a comprehensive summary of vernacular building strategies for ventilation, including their benefits and utilization of environmental resources; and thirdly, a comparative analysis of the quantitative evaluation indicators and methods (experiment and numerical modeling using computational fluid dynamics (CFD)) employed in these studies. This research underscores the need for a more comprehensive parameterization analysis of design strategy prototypes and more precise numerical investigations of the ventilation mechanism. These aspects are crucial for future explorations, particularly in examining the interaction mechanisms between the design parameters of bioclimatic ventilation strategies and the performance. •Research overview and current trends and challenges on natural ventilation in vernacular architecture.•Summarizing the vernacular building strategies for ventilation, including their utilization of environmental resources.•Exploring the indicators and methods used to evaluate the environmental benefits of vernacular ventilation strategies.•Emphasizing the parameterization of design strategy prototype and numerical investigation of ventilation mechanism.