From isolated voids to integrated systems: A systematic review of building lift-up design as thermal comfort hubs integrated with urban ventilation corridors

Building lift-up has been a vernacular architectural feature in tropical climates, with a hut built off the ground supported by columns. This feature has also been adopted in modern landmark buildings in tropical and subtropical cities. Nevertheless, only recently have researchers begun to systematically examine the impacts of such an architectural feature on local microclimates, from an isolated building to street canyons and building arrays. This literature review reveals that a primary effect of building lift-up design is the amplification of pedestrian-level wind velocity in the lift-up area, as well as in the lateral and wake flow regions within a maximum 6 H * 6H domain, which can be applied to create localized cooling spots on hot days. The detailed effects of building lift-up on the pedestrian level wind are highly context-dependent. Poorly integrated lift-up designs in complex urban arrays may have minimal or even adverse effects on average wind velocity improvement within the array. The selection criteria of lift-up design for targeted wind improvement is derived after the comparative analysis of alternative ventilation and microclimate strategies. The context-dependent performance, trade-offs among factors, and localized influence scope of lift-up design necessitates a shift towards a performance-based, data-driven, and multi-objective optimization framework, powered by the advancement of physically constrained AI-powered surrogate models. The ultimate aim is to technically integrate lift-up strategy with macro-scale urban ventilation corridor planning, and translate it into a key design feature in climate-adaptive and resilient urban solutions.