Recognising Green Infrastructure as a Part of the Fourth Nature Concept Through University Campuses

Every ecosystem on Earth is affected by people as well as has an impact on them. The connection between nature and culture, human knowledge and wisdom of Nature, between us and our environment, is in fact very strong, although sometimes underestimated. It can be promoted by a different way of designing architecture and urban plans – these all should change the quality of our decisions and consequently, once we are acquainted with better options or choices to select, also the quality of our lives will be raised. The Fourth Nature concept is being researched with the goal to identify strategies that create straight connections between culture and Nature, in order to provide humanity with better conditions for living in cities. We are urban beings, living with a current prognosis of being a part of a bigger number of urban dwellers each day. Many different ways the Fourth Nature can be practiced, seen and experienced by in several scales and forms could change our living conglomerates. As valuable places in cities, due to their insertion in the urban tissue and also as coexistence and knowledge development areas, university campuses are here taken to examine this aimed optimal relation between Nature and culture. University campuses have been for centuries an important part of human culture. Creating their own ecosystems, campuses impact on the functioning, sustainability and in the overall also on the appearance of the city, through a blue-green infrastructure implementation and its connections. Within the urban structures, they fulfil their role more significantly and provide important spatial, social, economic, visual and health functions. The area, which is often labelled as public or semi-public space, is thus a part of the blue-green infrastructure and its quality affects also the quality of the surrounding environment. The Fourth Nature is seen as a tool or as a turning point in the current environmental crisis and the university campuses are considered to be the modifiers of the quality of their surrounding environment. The intercrossed analysis of their properties in the current context may bring new ideas and application parameters for the design of the contemporary urban landscape.