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Dennis Zuev* The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the largest infrastructure program in history, and has become a symbol of growing significance of China and its power.

Agglomerated cork is a known material by its contribution to the sustainment of the environment, not only because it is a wholly natural material, without chemical additives, but also because its industrial process of production results from the lowest quality residues of cork or industrial waste material, unsuitable for other applications. It is a reusable material, which means, the cork facade elements can be converted into a new agglomerated material, demonstrating a huge potential for adaptation to existing buildings following a reversible process. It is durable, lightweight, water resistant, low-cost material, some of the properties that may qualify it as suitable for application in large surfaces of vertical construction façades. The aim of this article is to analyze the mechanical, thermal and acoustic characteristics of cork composites against site-specific climatic conditions of subtropical climates and its suitability as an external coating system for residential buildings with the goal to reduce the energy consumption for cooling the inner environment. In high-density cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong the majority of the buildings starting from the 1960s until early 21st century (Brach & Song 2006), did not integrate thermal insulation systems into external walls, producing a high level of heat transfer through the external façade from the outside environment during spring and summer seasons. Due to the extremely fast urban growth of the modern Chinese city, little importance is given to the quality of the external walls in current residential building construction. For at least during six months each year the consumption of energy due to air conditioning in Guangdong province is extremely high. The study concluded that substantial energy could be saved by implementing an external coating upgrade to existing buildings. Additionally, this study details the result obtained through software for energy simulations (Design Builder, ENVI-met) demonstrating the potential of this project to produce homogeneous and comfortable inside temperatures, which cools the indoor ambient temperature in summer time.

This study is an attempt to understand and describe the compositional principles of Chaoshan traditional houses (CTH) through a computational space syntax. In this approach, the space syntax is used to describe and verify the compositional rules of Chaoshan houses. Chaoshan rural residence is a classical Lingnan style building in Chaoshan area of eastern Guangdong province, associated with Teo-Swa people, a Han Chinese minority. This study takes the example the prototypes existing in the village of Zhupu, Haojiang District, Shantou city as a case study, to analyse the spatial form of the residences. The Zhupu village houses date from the Qing Dynasty - Qianlong period, around 1700 AD. The hypothesis of this study is that CTH buildings are a result of a space compositional rule system that can be described and replicated through a computational design methodology. This study will establish a computational architectural syntax, and is the first stage of an extended research work on the evolution of Chaoshan residential types. The understanding of this evolution may help, as future work, to develop urban strategies for adaptation of the CTH heritage buildings to the contemporary living conditions. As the result of this study is a computational 3D graphics modelling algorithm, the ability of the system to generate the house layouts is not limited to the reconstruction of existing typologies of CTH and its variations. The same algorithm will allow the generation of new housing schemes, with adaptation to design variables extracted from a particular site and region.

Sustainability takes priority with architect Matthew Barnett Howland. His house in England is made entirely of cork: 100 percent natural, 100 percent recyclable, with almost zero carbon emissions.

This study, focusing on the China's Yao minority community, investigates the feasibility to create a generative computational method to replicate the diversity of the existing Yao traditional wood buildings, addressing the critical issues currently facing computational design methods, in the attempt to adapt genetic-generative algorithms to the study of local ancient architecture. The project develops a computational tool to generate a network of three-dimensional prototypes, or building structures, derived from traditional wood frame village houses. It studies possible housing structures that illustrate some of the key working methods available in digital systems such as ‘generating' and ‘compositing' taking as a starting point computational strategies oriented towards geometry and where a set of local variables play a decisive role: available local technologies, use of raw materials, and the dimensioning of timber components based on data collected from Yao architecture.

In this paper, preliminary investigation was conducted to evaluate the potential ecological risk of heavy metals contamination in cemetery soils. Necrosol samples were collected from within and around the vicinity of the largest mass grave in Rwanda and analyzed for heavy metal concentrations using total digestion–inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and instrumental neutron activation analysis. Based on the concentrations of As, Cu, Cr, Pb, and Zn, the overall contamination degree (Cdeg) and potential ecological risks status (RI) of the necrosols were determined. The preliminary results revealed that the associated cemetery soils are only contaminated to a low degree. On the other hand, assessment of the potential ecological risk index (RI) revealed that cumulative heavy metal content of the soil do not pose any significant ecological risks. These findings, therefore, suggest that, while cemetery soils may be toxic due to the accumulation of certain heavy metals, their overall ecological risks may be minimal and insignificant.

This article presents an insight into one of the regions with the fastest-growing economy, heavily based on an entertainment, gaming and tourism industry, and that is urgently looking for a sustainable model that articulates with complementary sectors within the cultural and creative industries – Macao. Macao is facing a major economic and social challenge; it has grown as a vulnerable economy relying almost exclusively on gaming revenues. Alternative activities to diversify the economy are urgently required to answer the competition risks haunting this industry. The cultural and creative industries could be a complementary activity – a vehicle for economic diversification. However, current public and private stakeholders for the cultural and creative sector might have been neglecting the unique cultural and heritage ecosystem of the territory, focusing on isolate opportunities and overlooking an inclusive and robust strategy. A sustainable model that attends to the local conditions and its people is required for alternative activities to become a meaningful sector for the social and economic development of Macao.

Complexities of Languages and Multilingualism