FORGE
A design-science lab for human-building-climate systems at The University of Hong Kong.
Future, Occupant, Risk, and Generative Environments
What we're doing
The current agenda is concentrated around standards revision, future weather uncertainty, thermal comfort prediction, and AI-supported design pedagogy.
Why FORGE?
The lab is built on a simple position: architecture and energy systems have drifted too far from the people they claim to serve. FORGE writes people back into simulation, control, climate risk, and design reasoning.
Who’s here
FORGE is a compact research group spanning a postdoctoral researcher, PhD students, research assistants on site at HKU and remote locations, and undergraduate RAs. The team is currently working across ASHRAE 1959-TRP on updating real human heat assumptions, climate stress-testing and stochastic future weather modeling, ordinal thermal comfort, and Socratic Oracle as a design-pedagogy platform.
Open TeamWhat we work on
FORGE moves between building simulation, comfort science, climate futures, and design-facing AI through a small set of recurring technical workflows.
Recent output
Reframes thermal sensation prediction as an ordinal learning problem with calibrated probabilities for risk-aware comfort decisions. The model yields confidence-aware outputs that are more useful for control and design decisions under uncertainty than a flat seven-point label alone.
Hongshan Guo, Dorit Aviv
Read paperShows how missing-data policy reshapes feature sensitivity rankings and supports MRT-aware, occupant-centric HVAC control. The paper makes clear that preprocessing decisions materially affect what machine-learning models appear to learn from thermal comfort databases.
Hongshan Guo, Ilaria Pigliautile, Yu Chang, Qingyao Qiao, Yichun Li
Read paperFinds that gender differences become most pronounced under high-velocity cooling at lower temperatures, with implications for equitable fan-cooling design. By connecting subjective votes with skin-temperature responses, the study shows why mixed-mode cooling strategies should not assume uniform comfort response.
Chao Cen, Hongshan Guo, Lup Wai Chew, Nyuk Hien Wong
Read paper