As solar space heating is one of the most efficient ways to reduce fossil energy consumption, a hybrid solar air heating system for building space heating is proposed in this paper. The system includes passive and active dual function solar collectors. It was tested on a solar demonstration building, which was located on USTC (University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei China) campus. Different operation strategies of the hybrid solar air heating system were tested experimentally in order to evaluate heating effect of the system. The results showed that the strategy of passive solar heating for southern room space heating and active solar heating for northern room was a better operation strategy, by which the average indoor temperature of both southern and northern rooms reached 17.0 degrees C during the experiment. Based on the experimental results and software of TRNSYS simulation, the solar fractions of the system during the heating season in Hefei and Nyingchi were predicted with values of 39.5% and 69.0%, respectively. Above all, it presented an efficient design philosophy for building to utilize solar energy for space heating. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.