Understanding the effects of climate change on building indoor thermal conditions is of importance for providing a comfortable thermal environment for occupants. Some multi-family dwellings have already been listed as heritage in China (hereinafter referred to as heritage apartments), limiting modifications to the building envelope. However, the effect of climate change on thermal comfort in heritage apartments with a compact interior (i.e. without a living room) built before the 1980s in different Chinese climate zones has seldom been studied. This study focuses on the current and future thermal comfort in two-bedroom heritage apartments in China. The study was conducted for two different Chinese climate zones, that is, a cold climate zone (Beijing), and a hot summer and cold winter climate zone (Shanghai) and both current climate scenarios (typical meteorological years) and future climate scenarios (2050) were used. The results indicate, among other things, increases of 58%–60% and 41%–44% in the predicted average number of overheating hours in 2050 compared to the current climate for the studied bedrooms on the first floor in dwellings in Beijing and Shanghai, respectively.

A good indoor environment in classrooms is important because school children spend a significant amount of their time at schools and children are more susceptible than adults. It is also clear that a school indoor environment can affect the wellbeing and performance of students but a comfortable and healthy school indoor environment consumes energy. In the last decades, indoor environment optimization and energy efficient measures have been introduced to reduce this problem. However, although those standards are met, the IEQ as experienced by occupants is still not acceptable. Also, even with the implementation of energy efficient measures, energy consumption keeps rising while health seems to decrease. Based on a review of literature, this paper identifies the causes for the discrepancies and future directions of research are proposed. It is concluded that future research should focus on holistic assessment of IEQ factors and take into account students’ needs and influence.