Enhancing seasonal wind comfort through multi-objective optimization: A case study of marina bay teaching building in subtropics

Teaching building at marina bay typically adopt high-openness design to prioritize summer ventilation. This study identified excessive wind intensity during winter receiving high percentage of discomfort from subjective survey and field measurement. To balance the needs of summer ventilation cooling and winter wind protection, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were employed to examine the influence of transitional space layouts (e.g., courtyard elements, bottom elevated spaces, high-rise opening) on natural ventilation in enclosed educational complex using Comfortable Wind Zone Ratio (CWZR) as the evaluation criterion. Regression models between design elements and CWZR were established and optimized through Bayesian optimization. The results indicate that setting up corridors on the ground floor of the courtyard can increase the winter CWZR by 7 % compared to arranging building masses. Enclosing the bottom elevated space on the prevailing winter wind direction improves winter CWZR by 14 % while reducing summer CWZR by only 5 % compared to the benchmark case. Bayesian optimization converged after 34 iterations, yielding balanced comfort ( CWZR summer = 50.1 % and CWZR winter = 76.4 %) with opening on Elevated E , Opening N , and Opening W as the optimal configuration, underscoring the role of directional porosity in achieving consistent wind comfort across seasons. The findings provided empirical evidences for optimizing courtyard wind environments and balancing summer ventilation with winter wind protection in marina bay educational complex in the subtropics.