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Article

From Technological Sustainability to Social Sustainability: An Analysis of Hotspots and Trends in Residential Design Evaluation

by
Meijiao Song
*,
Jun Cai
* and
Yisi Xue
School of Art and Design, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510075, China
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2023, 15(13), 10088; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151310088
Submission received: 7 May 2023 / Revised: 15 June 2023 / Accepted: 19 June 2023 / Published: 26 June 2023
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Building Environment)
Browse Figures
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Abstract

:
Residential design should not only meet the growing demand for habitation but also reduce the negative impact on the natural environment. Therefore, the sustainability of residential buildings has become increasingly important in residential design evaluation. Taking the core database of the Web of Science platform as its source of information, this paper uses bibliometrics to visually analyze the current research status of residential design evaluation and its development trends, as well as hotspots of research from the perspectives of the annual distribution of publications, research fields and institutions, keywords, and highly cited articles. The results demonstrate the following: the number of publications on residential design evaluation has shown an overall upward trend and has grown rapidly over the past five years. Furthermore, due to the emergence of social issues, such as the aging population, social polarization, and rising urban poverty levels, scholars in the field have attached importance to the comprehensive evaluation of residential senior-friendliness, fairness, health, and quality, thereby expanding the connotation of residential sustainability from the technological dimension toward the social dimension. This paper can help researchers to identify future research directions in this field.

1. Introduction

The residential design evaluation system is a tool used to assess the quality and functionality of residential designs [1]. It holds significant importance in enhancing living standards, promoting sustainability [2], fostering community development [3], and driving design innovation. Firstly, residences are the central places where human life unfolds, and most non-work activities take place within them. The quality of residential spaces directly impacts people’s mood, lifestyle, and even their family and social relationships [4,5,6]. Secondly, the construction and maintenance of residences rank among the most resource-intensive human activities [7], thus necessitating the evaluation of residential design to gauge sustainability. Questions regarding how to evaluate residential design, the factors that determine residential quality, including the key determinants, and the future direction of residential design, are all essential topics for scholarly discussion.
In fact, the residential design evaluation system evolves as society develops. Global climate change and frequent extreme weather are completely reshaping ideas about human living [8], leading to growing demand for ecological and green residential design. Thus, environmental protection, energy efficiency, and material conservation have become important design evaluation elements [9]. The issue of residential senior-friendliness brought about by global population aging is a new trend that residential design must respond to [10,11,12,13]. Factors such as design for accessibility, the home health care environment, and residents’ health have become particularly important in residential design for older adults [14,15,16]. During the pandemic, many countries and regions were forced to address unexpected issues, resulting in many people working from home, travel restrictions, and the moving of classes online [17], with some regions adopting even more conservative measures [18]. These phenomena impacted residential properties and blurred the boundaries between residential buildings and offices, schools, and other venues [19], leading factors such as residential flexibility and fairness to become key elements for consideration in residential design [20,21,22].
The objective of the evaluation system research is to provide a standardized evaluation method to gauge the residential design for various demands from different groups of residents, promote residential design innovations, and adapt designs to the development of the society. Since different policies, laws, lifestyles, and residential forms affect the evaluation elements of residential design, these elements vary over different periods. Residential design evaluation was first applied to assess the user experience of special populations [23], such as low-income groups and older adults. Nasar proposed conducting a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) by conducting personal interviews with users and observing the characteristics of the housing environment [24]. Subsequently, residential design evaluation was applied to the economic evaluation of residential buildings. In 1991, the European Symposium on Management, Quality and Economics in Housing and Other Building Sectors published studies on the feasibility and economic evaluation of residential design [25]. As early as 1994, Kumar proposed an energy assessment of passive houses to achieve better thermal comfort [26], and Ulusoy presented an assessment framework that combined physical housing stock, the housing market, and the population [27]. Natividade argued that the existing evaluation system only dealt with a small number of residential design elements and lacked overall evaluation, and then proposed the Design Support System for a multidimensional evaluation of residential design [28]. In recent years, apartments have proliferated worldwide as iterative commodities. Concerns have been raised regarding the quality and healthiness of apartments. Foster proposed an assessment and regulatory framework for the healthiness of residences, considering factors such as daylighting, ventilation, sound insulation, privacy, and the extent to which policies are implemented to ensure open interior spaces. This approach considers the impact of design regulations on residential design during the design process [29]. While a significant amount of research has focused on commercial housing, some scholars evaluate the residential environment for special populations, including those residing in social housing and public housing, to ensure and promote social welfare [30].
The scope of residential design evaluation has continuously expanded, with adaptability, flexibility, sociability, safety, healthiness, fairness, and inclusiveness emerging as critical evaluation factors. People have begun to conduct more comprehensive and wide-ranging assessments of residential design to guide design practices and provide a basis for government housing policies [31,32]. However, questions regarding energy conservation, environmental protection, user participation, social housing, and housing fairness all arise when considering the future of residential design.
To understand the research status of residential design evaluation in recent years, this paper used Web of Science (WoS) as a data source, selected literature included in the core database from 2002 to 2023 as a sample, and adopted VOSviewer (version 1.6.16) and CiteSpace (v.6.2.R2 (64-bit) Advanced) software to visualize the number of papers published annually, as well as the research fields, publishers, and keywords in the relevant literature, in order to track the evolution of residential design evaluation factors and present the research hotspots, research frontiers, and future research trends in residential design evaluation to drive innovative developments in this field (Figure 1).

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Acquisition

The literature in this paper is derived from the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection of the Institute for Scientific Information, and database sources include the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Art and Humanities Citation Index. To retrieve literature in the research field of knowledge visualization and ensure its accuracy, multiple search strategies were tested, and TS = (Apartment Design Evaluation) OR (House Design Evaluation) OR (Condominium Design Evaluation) was finally employed as a search thread. The timespan was from 2002 to 2023, and the language selected was English. Each bibliography included the author, institution, abstract, keywords, publication year, issue (volume), and references. A total of 1610 papers were retrieved, and 504 articles were finally selected after manually deleting those outside the research scope, such as conferences.

2.2. Research Methods

After completing the collection of raw data, two types of bibliometric software, VOSviewer and CiteSpace, were used to analyze studies related to the residential design evaluation system with a combination of qualitative and quantitative research [33]. Bibliometrics owes its systematic development mainly to D.J.D. Price and Eugene Garfield [34]. Since the 1990s, bibliometrics has gradually become the main tool for evaluating scientific research. In recent years, a significant trend has been to adopt bibliometrics supplemented by information technology to assess hot topics in related fields and development trends in the field [35]. As a visual analysis tool based on the co-citation analysis theory and bibliometric methods, CiteSpace can be used to fully explore the overall research situation and development trends of a certain field and analyze elements of the literature such as authors, institutions, countries, and keywords [36]. However, in the clustering of keywords, CiteSpace has some drawbacks, such as blurred images and unclear clustering time. VOSviewer boasts advantages in co-occurrence network clustering and density analysis [37]. The two types of software can be applied to preprocessing and modeling analysis, the results of which are displayed in the form of visual models or charts to reflect research trends and hotspots in the field. Therefore, we aim to use CiteSpace and VOSviewer to demonstrate visually the knowledge structure and development of research related to the evaluation of residential design from 2002 to 2023. We summarize the annual changes in the publication of the core literature, analyze highly influential countries, institutions, research fields, journals, authors, and key literature, and identify emergent hotspots of research in the evaluation of residential design and the prediction of development trends (Figure 2).

3. Results

3.1. Annual Distribution of Literature on the Residential Design Evaluation System

According to the annual analysis report presented in the WoS core collection (Figure 3), the number of papers published in the field of research on residential design evaluation has continued to increase over the last 22 years. The research has three distinct stages, namely exploration, stable development, and rapid development.
(1) The exploration stage (2002–2008). Before 2008, there was a significant fluctuation in the number of papers published on residential design evaluation. During this stage, a total of 47 papers were published, with an average annual publication rate of 6.7 papers. In 2005, only one core paper was published, indicating that residential design evaluation was still in the stage of exploration and experimentation. High-rise apartment buildings [38] were the main research object at this stage, and residential design evaluation mainly focused on environmental quality [39], light wells [40], and energy efficiency. Hence, many evaluation systems for sustainable technologies emerged. This indicates that residential design was developing in the direction of energy conservation and environmental protection during this stage. Evaluating high-rise apartment buildings in the design phase would effectively reduce future energy consumption, which would help to achieve the sustainable development goals.
(2) The stable development stage (2009–2018). During this decade, research on residential design evaluation showed an overall upward trend, with a total of 221 papers published and an average annual publication rate of 22.1 papers, indicating that scholars in various fields had begun to conduct large-scale research on residential design evaluation. At this stage, a large number of papers started to examine residential design from the perspective of consumers, explore feedback on the living environment from residents, and pay attention to the consumer preference for residences and life cycles of residences [41], Such studies explored whether the physical environment (such as thermal comfort) met the needs of consumers in terms of use, which became a new standard for evaluating residential design [31].
(3) The rapid development stage (2019–2022). Since 2019, rapid growth has been seen in research on residential design evaluation. Over the past four years, the number of papers published reached 234, accounting for 46.4% of the total in the past 22 years. The average annual number of papers published reached 56.2 and peaked at 66 in 2022. Eleven core papers were published in February 2023. It is important to notice that this third stage coincides with the outbreak of the public health crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental crisis caused by the worsening global climate, leading to worldwide discussions about the sustainable development of human living environments, and making the importance of residential design evaluation even more apparent. Thus, greater attention is paid by the academic community to residential design evaluation.

3.2. Distribution of Research Fields

According to the data retrieved from WoS, research on residential design evaluation covers various fields. The research on residential design evaluation over the past 22 years focused on the fields of construction and building technology as well as engineering, for which 182 and 163 papers were published on WoS, respectively, ranking first and second, which is far higher than in other fields (Figure 4). This indicates that the focus on residential technology is most evident in the evaluation of residential design. Residential design evaluation is also relevant in fields such as energy and fuels (96), environmental studies (91), green and sustainable science and technology (86), and environmental sciences (79), of which 70% of papers are directly related to the environment; the key technologies addressed include passive technology, new energy technology, and purification technology. As can be seen from the distribution of research fields, residential design evaluation mainly assesses the impact of residential buildings on the environment, and the main research direction of residential design evaluation is still the technological sustainability of residential buildings, i.e., evaluating if the application of residential technology meets sustainable development goals (Table 1).
The core literature related to residential design evaluation is mainly published in three journals, i.e., Energy Buildings, Sustainability, and Building and Environment. As an internationally influential and authoritative journal with an impact factor (IF) of 7.201, Energy Buildings has published a total of 47 related papers, of which the cumulative citation frequency is 1581 times, with 33 citations per paper, on average. Sustainability has published a total of 36 articles, with a citation frequency of 171 times, and Building and Environment has published a total of 33 relevant papers, with a citation frequency of 717 times (Table 2). The three journals focus on how design promotes environmental sustainability and the interaction between humans and indoor and outdoor built environments, aiming to promote the sustainable development of architecture.

3.3. Analysis of Research Countries, Regions, and Institutions

Through the VOSviewer publication country cooperation network (Figure 5), it can be seen that the size of the nodes in the publication country cooperation network reflects the total number of papers published. The color of the nodes changing from purple to yellow represents the time when the country started to publish research, the yellow line represents close cooperation in recent years, the purple line represents close cooperation in the early years, and the thickness of the lines indicates the intensity of cooperation. More than 30 countries around the world are home to scholars producing research on residential design evaluation, with China (N = 65) and the UK (N = 48) ranking first and second for the number of papers published, accounting for 10% of the total. Other countries in the top 10 are the USA (N = 43), South Korea (N = 29), Spain (N = 25), Australia (N = 22), Italy (N = 20), Canada (N = 19), Turkey (N = 18), and Sweden (N = 13). Japan, Turkey, and the USA were the first countries to produce research on residential design evaluation, while China, Canada, and Spain started later. The UK has the closest cooperation in research with Japan, Australia, and China; China has the strongest cooperation with the USA and the UK. This analysis indicates that research on residential design evaluation is concentrated in developed countries and regions where the housing market is mature. Their continuous interest in this research field aims at further improving the market. Although China, as a developing country, started researching residential design evaluation relatively late, it has become the country with the highest number of papers published and works in close cooperation with other countries. This is largely due to the fact that China is one of the fastest growing housing markets in the past 20 years, and the rapid development of its housing market and the consequent social problems have provided a sufficient basis for research on residential design evaluation. This demonstrates the significance of residential design evaluation on residential designs.

3.4. Analysis of Highly Cited Authors

By tracking highly cited authors, we can identify influential researchers in relevant research fields and thus find hot topics and research frontiers. According to the ranking of authors by frequency of citation, among the top five highly cited authors, Professor Akalin from Gazi University published the most papers, focusing on the evaluation of residential appearance [48,49], with a total of 166 citations. Professor Akalin and Professor Yildirim at Gazi University collaborated on a total of three papers [50]; Professor Pulselli from the University of Florence was the most-cited scholar [51]; Gill, a scholar dedicated to researching the evaluation system of low-energy residential design, studies sustainable building technology; in 2007, he published a paper on evaluating sustainable housing, which was cited 223 times. Although Kane, a scholar of the sociology of aging at Lincoln University, only published one paper in this field on the comprehensive design evaluation of family-style elder care apartments, his frequency of citation reached 212. Highly cited studies in the field of residential design evaluation are relatively scattered, due to a lack of sustained attention to this field, with little, though occasional, cooperation, and without continuous and inter-agency cooperation (Table 3).

3.5. Keyword Analysis

3.5.1. Most Frequently Occurring Keywords and Keyword Clustering

By ranking the research keywords on WoS from 2002 to 2023 in descending order of frequency, it can be seen that keywords such as performance, thermal comfort, health, energy, environment, and sustainability are the main research topics in the field of residential design evaluation. Among them, performance and thermal comfort have the highest frequency and intensity, appearing 62 and 40 times, respectively, showing that residential energy consumption is a mainstream topic in residential design evaluation research (Table 4).
We imported the WoS literature data into the VOSviewer and obtained a total of 2733 keywords. After setting the minimum number of keyword occurrences to 6, a total of 77 valid keywords were obtained, and 6 clusters were formed after the screening, namely cluster 1, health; cluster 2, energy; cluster 3, environment; cluster 4, decision making; cluster 5, study method; and cluster 6, sustainability. Clusters 1, 2, and 3 contained 64% of the keywords and were the three major keyword clusters for residential design evaluation research. Among them, clusters 1 and 2 focused on the physical environment of residences, while cluster 3 focused more on the social attributes of residences (Figure 6).
Cluster 1 concerns the evaluation of the physical environment of residences from the perspective of user experience and includes 19 keywords, such as health, people, physical activity, perception, exposure, quality, built environment, policy, satisfaction, and impacts [52,53,54,55,56]. Through analysis, we found that this clustering indicates that when designing residential buildings, it is necessary to consider the multiple impacts of the building’s environment on the physical health, behavior, cognition, and experience of residents while paying attention to the quality of residential buildings to meet their needs and preferences [57]. Cluster 2 was composed of 17 keywords, including energy, passive house, refurbishment, thermal comfort, climate, retrofit, and ventilation, for the evaluation of the physical environment of residential buildings from the perspective of a residence’s overall performance. Cluster 2 indicated that the evaluation of residential sustainability involves the issues of energy efficiency, costs, renovation, and thermal comfort and needs to consider the impact of climate conditions, in terms of where a residential building is located, on its design and energy use [58,59,60,61]. The keywords included in clusters 1 and 2 are crucial in residential design evaluation and need to be considered comprehensively to achieve the efficiency and sustainability of designing and using residential buildings. Cluster 3 consists of 13 keywords, including environment, behavior, consumption, benefits, social housing, and comfort, to evaluate the social aspects of residential design [62,63]. Cluster 3 mainly comprises the relationship between residential design and social equity, emphasizing the impact of housing services on specific populations. It is believed that factors such as residential behavior, living habits, consumption, and welfare policies have a profound impact on residential evaluation for special groups. These keywords essentially reflect whether residential designs meet the goals of social sustainability [64], namely achieving social equity, ensuring social participation, maintaining social stability, and respecting social diversity. The above data indicate that there has been in-depth research in this area. The research focuses on evaluating the technological sustainability of the physical environment of residential buildings, from both the perspective of user experience and that of the overall performance of the residential building itself, as well as evaluation of the social sustainability of residential buildings (Figure 7).
In summary, the research focus of residential design evaluation is to evaluate the sustainability of residential buildings. In the early stages, scholars focused on the impact of performance indicators related to sustainable residential technology on residential design standards and provided a system for evaluating the sustainability of residential design, aiming to develop more efficient energy-saving technologies to reduce residential energy consumption [65,66]. In the middle stage, the academic community paid more attention to the assessment of carbon emissions, comfort, and quality throughout the lifecycle of residential buildings, thereby expanding the meaning of sustainability [67]. In recent years, technical issues such as residential energy consumption related to sustainability have remained a research focus. However, scholars have begun to pay more attention to the design and evaluation of public housing, social housing, and other housing for special populations, advocating social sustainability and emphasizing the equity, diversity, and inclusivity of residential buildings [68]. Studies have shown that the research in this field is developing toward evaluating the social sustainability of residential buildings.

3.5.2. Keyword Bursts

Bursts on CiteSpace is used to represent the degree of change in the frequency of the occurrence of a keyword within a certain period. It can analyze the occurrence frequency and trend of a keyword in different periods to further understand the evolution of keywords in the field. Figure 8 shows the time of the first occurrence and duration of each keyword, reflecting its duration of influence in the research field. The blue line represents the timespan of research, and the red line represents the time of bursts. From the list of the top 15 burst terms in the field of research on residential design evaluation from 2002 to 2023, we can see the years when bursts begin and end, as well as the strength of bursts in each period. Since 2014, the research hotspots of residential design evaluation have undergone a significant and rapid transformation [69,70]. From 2002 to 2014, the academic community mainly explored evaluation methods for residential energy efficiency, leading to a large number of papers on residential energy efficiency emerging in 2014 and reaching saturation in 2020. The speed of bursts has accelerated since 2014, with new hotspots appearing almost every year. Following the emergence of energy efficiency, burst terms such as social housing, consumption, ventilation, criteria, sustainability, and quality have emerged, and this research dimension is constantly expanding. Among the top 15 burst terms, energy efficiency has lasted for six years and has been the keyword with the longest emergence time, followed by social housing and ventilation, which have lasted for four years. Sustainability and quality have been the leading hotspots of research since their emergence. The strength of social housing, quality, and sustainability is higher, indicating that they are key research directions for residential design evaluation. The above research suggests that with the rapid development of human society, residential design is also progressing iteratively. Humanistic indicators such as fairness and suitability for older adults have entered the purview of research on residential design evaluation. The focus of residential design evaluation has shifted from evaluation based on technological indicators towards comprehensive evaluation, including social indicators, with broader research perspectives and greater inclusiveness [66].

3.6. Analysis of Highly Cited Literature

The key literature in this field can be analyzed through the highly cited literature. Among the 495 papers related to residential design evaluation retrieved from the WoS core collection database, the top 15 highly cited papers mainly come from fields such as architecture and building technology, energy, public science, and geriatrics. Among these 15 papers, 9 are from the field of architecture and building technology, constituting 60% of the highly cited literature.
The majority of the highly cited papers combine energy science, environmental science, environmental psychology, and other disciplines to evaluate and study sustainable technologies such as housing life cycles, resource consumption, and ecological construction technology (Table 5). Gill et al. (2010) [71] published “Low energy Dwellings: the Contribution of Behaviours to Actual Performance”, the most frequently cited paper, with a total of 223 citations. The authors conducted a continuous POE of users on the website Eco Homes in the UK to verify the energy performance of residential buildings, as well as user comfort and satisfaction, under the influence of daily activities [71]; Pulselli et al. (2007) [72] published “Energy analysis of building manufacturing, maintenance and use: Em-building indices to evaluate housing sustainability”, the third most cited paper, with a total of 168 citations. This article tested and compared different architectural elements to evaluate which materials and structures contribute to achieving housing sustainability, providing a series of parameters for a comprehensive evaluation of the building industry [72]. Sage-Lauck et al. published the paper “Evaluation of phase change materials for improving thermal comfort in a super insulated residential building”, ranking fifth with a frequency of 107 citations. This paper pointed out that a common challenge for passive houses is overheating; the authors conducted an evaluation of the performance of phase changing materials by monitoring the indoor environmental quality and architectural energy consumption [73]. “An environmental assessment of wood and steel-reinforced concrete housing construction” by Gerilla et al. (2007) [74] was cited 106 times, ranking seventh. This paper compared the life cycles of Japanese wood and steel-reinforced concrete houses and designed different optimized schemes for a final energy-saving scheme [74]. The paper “GA-based decision support system for housing condition assessment and refurbishment strategies” proposed an assessment model for house refurbishment based on a generic algorithm, while discussing the feasibility of the refurbishment scheme by assessing life-cycle cost, restoration cost, and improved quality [75]. The paper “Impact of building automation control systems and technical building management systems on the energy performance class of residential buildings: An Italian case study” concentrated on the assessment of the impact on residential design of building automation control systems and technical building management systems, the result of which would help users decide which system to choose [76]. Kane et al. (2007) [77] published “Resident outcomes in small-house nursing homes: A longitudinal evaluation of the initial greenhouse program”, the second most cited paper (cited 212 times). This paper proposed a residential model more suitable for older adults [77]. By altering the scale of the living environment and conducting four interviews, the team gathered data on 11 factors, such as emotional well-being, satisfaction, self-reported health, and functional status, to evaluate the life quality of older adults and the sustainability of their living environment.
Another theme discussed in the highly cited literature is the social sustainability of housing. James et al. (2008) [78] published a paper entitled “Life Space and Risk of Alzheimer Disease, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Cognitive Decline in Old Age”, with a frequency of 105 citations, ranking eighth [78]. This paper tests the hypothesis that a narrow living space (the degree of movement in the environment covered during daily functions) is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, and faster cognitive decline among older adults. The results indicated that people with limited living space at home are almost twice as likely to have Alzheimer’s disease as those with larger living spaces and that the area of residential space is positively correlated with the quality of life of older adults. The above data reflect that although research on residential design evaluation mainly focuses on residential performance, social factors such as residential senior-friendliness are starting to receive increasing attention.

4. Discussion

Residential design evaluation is a comprehensive concept that integrates the architectural environment, engineering technology, socioeconomics, and psychology. As an interdisciplinary research field, it has significant implications for various fields, such as architecture, environmental science, and socioeconomics. At the same time, with the constantly changing social relationships and the impact of constantly developing technology on housing, evaluating residential design is the key to advancing residential development.
The distribution of research fields and the bursts of keywords indicate that the evaluation of the sustainability of residential buildings through the perspectives of building technology and energy technology has developed rapidly. The field has progressed to the point that it is now possible to realize the vision of zero-energy housing. However, concerns still persist regarding the energy consumption of residential buildings in general, and difficulties remain in articulating a precise definition of sustainability in this context. Although previous studies have employed bibliometric methods to examine specific aspects of residential design evaluation, such as satisfaction assessment [84], passive housing design evaluation [85], building life-cycle assessment [86], evaluation of smart housing for older adults [87], and solar technology for residential buildings [88,89], there remains a lack of comprehensive discussion on residential design evaluation as a whole. While evaluating specific aspects of residential design is crucial for ensuring housing quality, the focus of this study lies in observing and discussing the overall trends and comprehensive development of residential design evaluation, which allows us to track the dynamic changes in residential design. By synthesizing the key areas of focus and hotspots in previous studies, we aim to outline the future direction of residential design. Thus, the uniqueness of this study lies in providing a more macroscopic and holistic perspective of residential design to better guide its future development. The analysis of keywords and highly cited literature demonstrates that, although various technical means are being explored in an attempt to achieve residential sustainability, and evaluations related to energy efficiency, materials, water resources, and lifecycle analysis are being conducted to ensure the quality of residential structures, residential buildings continue to have a significant environmental impact. The underlying causes behind these contradictory phenomena warrant further discussion and exploration. Due to the commodity nature of most residential buildings, their construction, buying, selling, replacement, and renovation processes are subject to market factors. While they yield commercial benefits, they also give rise to a range of environmental and residential fairness issues. To address these challenges, it is imperative to reassess the concept of residence and broaden the understanding of sustainability. It is recognized by the academic community that evaluating residential buildings based solely on technical factors appears insufficient to achieve sustainable development. Research on residential design evaluation has begun to advocate for more comprehensive and wide-ranging assessments. Social factors, including adaptability, flexibility, sociability, safety, healthiness, fairness, and inclusiveness, have started to play an increasingly important role in evaluating the sustainability of residential buildings, as exemplified by the influence of Kane’s 2007 article evaluating the residential environment for older adults. Residential design evaluation based on this understanding of sustainability can help to optimize residential design comprehensively, thereby elevating industry standards, stimulating innovation, and ultimately realizing more sustainable and humanized residential environments.
Based on the above analysis, it becomes evident that residential design evaluation encompasses a broader significance beyond its function as a mere evaluation tool. It serves as a reflection of human cognition of housing. While the literature data provide a tangible manifestation of the evolving framework of residential design evaluation, its true essence lies in its ability to represent the transformations in human understanding and perception of the residential environment.

5. Conclusions

The current study uses bibliometrics to explore the core literature in the field of residential design evaluation and adopts CiteSpace and VOSviewer to deduce and analyze the research status and development trends in the field of residential design evaluation, laying the foundation for more in-depth theoretical research on residential design evaluation.
Firstly, the literature related to residential design evaluation has shown a continuous growth trend since 2002, and especially since 2018; the annual number of papers published has more than doubled compared to the period before 2018, indicating that a comprehensive understanding of such research is urgent and necessary. This study involves multiple disciplines, covering the environment, management, and economics based on construction and building technology, with high requirements in terms of the researcher’s interdisciplinary background. It reflects the complex and comprehensive nature of this research work. As of February 2023, this paper identified Pulselli et al. as representative figures in the field of residential design evaluation using bibliometric methods and specified the highly influential literature in this field. China, the UK, and the USA are major participants in residential design evaluation research.
Secondly, the diversity of research fields and the analysis of keywords (over 90 keywords had a frequency exceeding six) indicate that studies on residential design evaluation have a variety of backgrounds, although housing sustainability is evaluated from two main perspectives. One is the evaluation of the sustainability of residential technology to evaluate more effectively whether sustainable technology is used optimally in residential design to create a more efficient, energy-saving, and comfortable living environment while mitigating environmental harm. Keywords for this perspective account for 70%, among which the most frequently appearing one is “performance”. The other is the evaluation of the social sustainability of residential buildings. The intention is to provide methods for the evaluation of hidden factors in residential design and ensure the rights and interests of vulnerable groups are upheld, such as energy rights and the right to an adequate standard of living and, thus, to provide residential designs that are better adapted to residents’ physical habits, that protect safety, and that achieve residential fairness. During the process of its development, the research focus of residential design evaluation has shifted from technological sustainability to social sustainability. The high citation rates of the literature on residential design for older adults and social housing affirm the public’s attention to social equity, suggesting that residential design has entered a new stage. The study indicates that the following aspects may become hot topics in the future. First, to address the worsening global climate, residential design evaluations of technological sustainability, such as residential energy consumption, will remain a research focus in this field. Second, following the global pandemic, issues in the social sustainability dimension, such as the flexibility, adaptability, and health of residential spaces, will continue to be of concern to the academic community. Third, still from the perspective of social sustainability, the decline in global birth rates, negative population growth, and other aging issues have made it increasingly necessary to establish an evaluation system for housing design for older adults. This, therefore, may become a future research focus.
This study provides a development path for residential design evaluation, a review of the research history, and important references to formulate residential policies. The research findings can also help residential design researchers to formulate new research directions, provide solutions for some basic design research as well as the application of new technologies, and guide scholars in forming new perspectives. In future research, residential design evaluation will be studied in terms of sustainability, and the discrepancy between technological and social sustainability evaluations via residential design practice will be analyzed.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, M.S.; methodology, M.S.; software, M.S.; validation, M.S., J.C. and Y.X.; formal analysis, M.S.; investigation, M.S.; resources, M.S.; data curation, M.S. and Y.X.; writing—original draft preparation, M.S.; writing—review and editing, M.S.; visualization, M.S. and Y.X.; supervision, J.C.; project administration, J.C.; funding acquisition, J.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, grant number 20YJC760093.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Not applicable.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 1. An analysis of hotspots and trends in residential design evaluation theoretical framework.
Figure 1. An analysis of hotspots and trends in residential design evaluation theoretical framework.
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Figure 2. Research methods flow chart.
Figure 2. Research methods flow chart.
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Figure 3. Annual changes in the number of papers published on residential design evaluation on WoS.
Figure 3. Annual changes in the number of papers published on residential design evaluation on WoS.
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Figure 4. Distribution of fields on WoS.
Figure 4. Distribution of fields on WoS.
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Figure 5. Network map of international collaboration on WoS.
Figure 5. Network map of international collaboration on WoS.
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Figure 6. Network map keyword clustering on WoS.
Figure 6. Network map keyword clustering on WoS.
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Figure 7. Co-occurrence density map of keywords on WoS.
Figure 7. Co-occurrence density map of keywords on WoS.
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Figure 8. Top 15 keywords with the strongest citation bursts, 2002–2023.
Figure 8. Top 15 keywords with the strongest citation bursts, 2002–2023.
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Table
Table 1. The most frequent topics on WoS.
Table 1. The most frequent topics on WoS.
CountCentralityCategory
1820.49Construction and building technology
1460.31Engineering
960.18Energy and fuels
910.12Environmental studies
860.02Green and sustainable science and technology
790.22Environmental sciences
620.05Environmental engineering
480.68Occupational health
480.07Architecture
450.01Urban studies
Table
Table 2. Top five journals with the highest number of publications on WoS.
Table 2. Top five journals with the highest number of publications on WoS.
SourceCountFrequencyIF2022
Energy Buildings [42,43]4715817.201
Sustainability [44]371713.889
Building and Environment [45]337177.093
Building Research and Information [46]145464.799
Sustainable cities and Society [47]1321610.696
Table
Table 3. Top five highly cited authors on WoS.
Table 3. Top five highly cited authors on WoS.
AuthorCountFrequency
Pulselli, R.M.2259
Gill, Z.M.1223
Kane, R.A.1212
Yildirim, K.4184
Akalin, A.5166
Table
Table 4. Top 10 high-frequency keywords on WoS.
Table 4. Top 10 high-frequency keywords on WoS.
#KeywordCountStrength#KeywordCountStrength
1Performance621996Environment2372
2Thermal comfort411497Simulation2271
3Health40768Consumption2178
4Energy33959Sustainability2171
5Energy efficiency266810Energy performance1863
Table
Table 5. Top 15 highly cited papers.
Table 5. Top 15 highly cited papers.
AuthorsTitleFrequencyYearKeywordsSource
Gill, Z.M., Tierney, M.J. et al. [71]Low-energy dwellings: the contribution of behaviors to actual performance2232010Planned behavior; Domestic appliances; Consumption; Determinants; ContextBuilding Research and Information
Kane, R.A., Lum, T.Y. et al. [77]Resident outcomes in small-house nursing homes: A longitudinal evaluation of the initial Green House program2122007Managed-care program; Quality of lifeJournal of the American Geriatrics Society
Pulselli, R.M., Simoncini E. et al. [72]Energy analysis of building manufacturing, maintenance, and use: Em-building indices to evaluate housing sustainability1682007Energy analysis; Em-building indices; Housing sustainabilityEnergy and Buildings
Sage-Lauck, J.S., Sailor, D.J. et al. [73]Evaluation of phase change materials for improving thermal comfort in a super-insulated residential building1072014Passive house; Concrete; Walls; MassEnergy and Buildings
Gerilla, G.P., Teknomo, K. et al. [74]An environmental assessment of wood and steel reinforced concrete housing construction1062007Environmental impact; Residential development; Sustainable development; Life-cycle assessmentBuilding and Environment
James, B.D., Boyle, P.A. et al. [78]Life space and risk of Alzheimer disease, mild cognitive impairment, and cognitive decline in old age1052011Adults; Mobility; Frailty; Cohort; Work; Population; Disability; Enrichment; Pathology; PeopleAmerican Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
Yang, Y.Q., Wang, S.Q. et al. [54]A fuzzy quality function deployment system for buildable design decision-makings1022003Customer; Framework; NeedsAutomation in Construction
Hui, L., Edem, N.K. et al. [79]Evaluation of a seasonal storage system of solar energy for house heating using different absorption couples1002011Solar energy; Seasonal storage; Absorption; Storage capacity; EfficiencyEnergy Conversion and Management
Zhu, Y.X., Lin, B.R. [80]Sustainable housing and urban construction in China892004Sustainable housing; Urban construction; Techniques; Simulation; EvaluationEnergy and Buildings
Stevenson, F., Rijal, H.B. [81]Developing occupancy feedback from a prototype to improve housing production882010Post-occupancy evaluation; Design; Environment; BehaviorBuilding Research and Information
Hidayetoglu, M.L., Yildirim, K. et al. [50]The effects of color and light on indoor wayfinding and the evaluation of the perceived environment862012House facade preference; Individual differences; Spatial orientation; Gender differences; Sex differences; Complexity; Mood; Representations; Satisfaction; ArchitectureJournal of Environmental Psychology
Juan, Y.K., Kim, J.H. et al. [75]GA-based decision support system for housing condition assessment and refurbishment strategies852009Construction; Design; Model; Optimization; Buildings; KnowledgeAutomation in Construction
Motuziene, V., Rogoza, A. et al. [82]Construction solutions for energy efficient single-family house based on its life cycle multi-criteria analysis: a case study792016Environmental performance; Building energy; CO2 emissions; DesignJournal of Cleaner Production
Kaewunruen, S., Rungskunroch, P. et al. [83]A digital-twin evaluation of net zero energy building for existing buildings702019Residential buildings; House; Resource; Design; SystemSustainability
Akalin, A., Yildirim, K. et al. [48]Architecture and engineering students’ evaluations of house facades: Preference, complexity, and impressiveness672009Turkish students; Design; Perception; Environment; Exploration; Experience; Laypersons; Buildings: Diversity; AmericanJournal of Environmental Psychology
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Song, M.; Cai, J.; Xue, Y. From Technological Sustainability to Social Sustainability: An Analysis of Hotspots and Trends in Residential Design Evaluation. Sustainability 2023, 15, 10088. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151310088

AMA Style

Song M, Cai J, Xue Y. From Technological Sustainability to Social Sustainability: An Analysis of Hotspots and Trends in Residential Design Evaluation. Sustainability. 2023; 15(13):10088. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151310088

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Song, Meijiao, Jun Cai, and Yisi Xue. 2023. "From Technological Sustainability to Social Sustainability: An Analysis of Hotspots and Trends in Residential Design Evaluation" Sustainability 15, no. 13: 10088. https://doi.org/10.3390/su151310088

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