The energy demand in China is rapidly growing, the development and applications of low energy technologies for green buildings have been paid much concern. The hollow block ventilated wall is proposed in this paper. According to the characteristic of the hollow part from up to down, the supply air passes through the cavity of the block, and then discharges to the outside after the heat exchange with the concrete hollow block, the cooling and heating requirements of envelope caused by outdoor environment can be partially removed; the building cooling/heating load can be greatly reduced or even eliminated. The Frequency-Domain Finite Difference (FDFD) model is established and the thermal performance analysis of hollow wall is carried out by using FDFD method in frequency domain. A CFD model is developed to simulate the thermal characteristics of this structure for reference for validating the FDFD model. The results demonstrate that the predictions of the FDFD and CFD models agree very well, and the FDFD model can provide accurate prediction. When the frequency varies, the frequency response of the heat flux is not obvious in low frequency region and is significant in high frequency. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.