Comprehensive renovation and optimization design of balconies in old residential buildings in Beijing: A study

This study presents a comprehensive approach to renovating and optimizing balconies in old residential buildings in Beijing. Firstly, it explores residential balconies' evolution, characteristics, and development trends to identify various sample types and understand the associated problems and residents' needs related to balconies through investigation. Secondly, the Rhino/Grasshopper parametric platform is employed to simulate the performance and analyze data from standard balcony types, resulting in five qualitative and four quantitative renovation strategies and methods. Subsequently, these comprehensive renovation and optimization design strategies are implemented in the renovation process, and their performance is simulated. The daylight autonomy (DA), universal daylight indicator (UDI), and spatial daylight autonomy (sDA) metrics experienced significant increases of 16.56, 20.12, and 0.13, respectively, indicating improved light environment and functionality. Notably, the proposed strategies maintain consistent energy consumption and thermal comfort levels. Both PMV and PPD have improved, but the improvement is not significant, only by 0.01. The window-to-wall ratio has been increased by 0.1, and insulation has been added. The overall thermal comfort value is stable. These findings validate the practicality and effectiveness of the proposed approach and methods. This study provides valuable references for renovating and optimizing balconies in old residential buildings, contributing to problem-solving efforts and enhancing living quality.