The latest research surrounding architecture in China has mainly focused on six aspects: urban design, architectural culture and heritage protection, building technology and green building, rural architecture design, digital architecture design, and building industrialization.

Urban design tries to build an innovative urban design theory that has positive impacts on a value level, at the design level and at the implementation level. The practice of Chinese urban design includes green city design, urban and rural sustainable development, the protection of urban character and more.

Architectural culture and heritage protection in China has a long history. In recent years, with a deeper understanding and reflection of the importance of city character and the environmental crisis, more and more architectural research is being done regarding how regional culture, historical context and the natural environment can intertwine and complement one another.

Building technology and green building are key to ensuring the sustainability of the building environment, and to effectively reducing energy consumption in construction while significantly improving the quality of the built environment. It aims to take effective measures to deal with global climate change. Urban space, ecological environment, physical built environment, comprehensive disaster prevention and mitigation are the main research fields.

China’s “beautiful countryside” has become the symbol of the rapid development of rural architecture design. Research in this area mainly focuses on the construction of local buildings, regional buildings, rural public buildings, green buildings, earth buildings, the protection of rural ruins and traditional village protection, rural construction, post-disaster reconstruction and so on.

Digital architectural design began with a non-linear architectural design course in the Tsinghua University School of Architecture in 2004. Following that, Southeast University, Tongji University, South China University of Technology and many other universities set up related courses. The course regarded fractal, cluster and other ideas as the basis of design. Rhino, Maya and other software were used as common tools to explore biological form analysis, site simulation and so on. A series of scientific research, teaching and exchange activities told of the development of China’s digital building design.

The new era of building industrialization is arriving. The main research fields focus on energy-savings, emission reduction, structural optimization, industrial upgrading and major industrial innovation. Until now, precast concrete structures are still the mainstream, but prefabricated steel structures and wooden structure have grown in importance and continue to expand. Positive policies supporting these structures were issued all over the country to promote the development of prefabricated buildings. For the construction industry, vigorously developing prefabricated buildings is the top priority in China’s future construction industry.