Research into the Climate Adaptability Created by Human Settlement of Traditional Villages in Hunan

In order to understand the current condition of traditional villages’ human settlement in Hunan area, this research team, taking 21 traditional villages in southern Hunan area as its research subject, qualitatively analyzed the adaptability of traditional villages’ human settlement to three aspects as natural disastrous climate, daily climate, as well as long-term natural climate through field research and survey in the summertime of 2015. At the same time, typical traditional dwellings and the newly-built ones in Village Shang Gantang, "a millennium ancient village", were selected as testing subject. The indoor thermal comfort degree of this village's dwellings was investigated and analyzed through simulation analyzing and on-site testing the sunshade and wind speed of street-lane, indoor space temperature of traditional dwellings, and indoor temperature and humidity of different enclosure structures in the manner of questionnaire. It was found after the results that: traditional villages are equipped with sound climate adaptability in such aspects as site selection and distribution, indoor functional layout and enclosure structure construction, etc, to bring sound natural ventilation effect by making the most of the laneways and courtyard;local traditional dwellings adopt enclosure structure with big thermal inertia to generate relatively good heat prevention effect to create a sound indoor heat environment under a joint influence of "transitional space" and "climactic space". In addition, though the indoor humidity exceeds human body comfort degree in the summertime of traditional dwellings, still local dwellers are relatively adaptive in general. At last, constructive suggestions are proposed to the designing of new villages’ human settlement by combining the features of traditional villages.