Climate Adaptation of Folk House Envelopes in Xinjiang Arid Region: Evaluation and Multi-Objective Optimization from Historical to Future Climates

Under intensifying global warming and extreme climate events, the climate adaptability of folk houses in Xinjiang’s arid regions faces critical challenges. However, existing studies predominantly focus on traditional folk houses under current climate conditions, neglecting modern material hybrids and long-term performance under future warming scenarios. This study develops a data-driven framework to assess and enhance building envelope performance across historical-to-future climate conditions (2007–2021 TMY data, 2024 observations, and 2050/2080 SSP3–7.0 projections) using the entropy-weighted TOPSIS method and NSGA-II algorithm. Analyzing rammed earth, brick–wood, and brick–concrete folk houses in Kashgar, Hotan, Kuqa, and Turpan, the optimization targets thermal discomfort hours (TDHs), heating energy consumption (HEC), and net present value (NPV). The results demonstrate optimized solutions achieve 30–60 year climate resilience, reducing HEC by 51.54–84.76% (43.02–125.78 kW·h/m2·a) compared to baseline buildings, TDH by 15–52.93% (301–1236 h) in arid Zone A and by 5.54–10.8% (208–352 h) in the extreme hot-arid Zone B (Turpan), and NPV values by CNY 31,000–85,000. Rammed earth constructions demonstrate superior performance in Zone A, while brick–concrete exhibits optimal extreme hot-arid adaptability, and brick–wood requires prioritized retrofitting. The findings advocate revising China’s design standards to address concurrent winter overcooling and summer overheating risks under future warming. This work establishes a climate-resilient optimization paradigm for arid-region folk houses, advancing energy efficiency and thermal comfort.