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The subject of the article is the phenomenon of creating new sacral buildings of the Lutheran Church in Finland, despite the increasing secularization of the society. The goal was to understand the reasons of the issue through the prism of the function and role these architecture play for local communities. The narrative research method was used to analyse selected examples of sacral architecture. The method allowed to capture the pragmatic aspects of architecture, such as the structure of the object and the form in the cultural context embedded in the appropriate place and time. The issue is presented in a religious and social context, discovering the causes and ways of adjusting sacral objects to the contemporary, diverse needs of the community. Continuation of the tradition of creating high-quality architecture combined with the vernacular building tradition is present in contemporary sacral architecture. Their function and scale are adjusted to the purpose they are to serve not only in the community, but often in the entire district as meeting places for residents.
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Sacral architecture in contemporary Finnish residential environment

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Changes in consumer behaviour have led to the phenomenon of certain social groups closing off and the emergence of private spaces where community members spend their leisure time and pursue their recreational behaviour. The main objective of this article is to identify possible solutions for the design of an enclosed recreational space. It considers cohousing, defined as a bottom-up, non-institutional residential model in which a sustainable causality-community model of social perception applies. The author poses the question: what are the possible solutions for shaping the closed space of cohousing? The method used was that of a desk-based data analysis, which included publications, reports and studies on the problem addressed. The websites of individual cohousing communities were also an important source. The spatial scope of the research included the countries where cohousing is most popular (Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands). Entities characterised by different architectural forms were used for empirical illustration. Based on the results of the research, possible solutions for the design of a closed cohousing recreational space were identified, allowing recreational activities to be undertaken with selected and/or all members of the community. The research additionally showed, that the characteristics of the place (the architectural form of cohousing) do not necessarily imply restrictions on the enclosed common spaces. Their design is mainly influenced by the users themselves, their needs, but also the recreational activity skills they will be able to share with other users. Appropriate criteria for the selection of residents that determine a certain type of cohousing are therefore of importance. This article only emphasises the problem of closed recreational spaces; in the author’s opinion, it can serve as a kind of introduction to the debate and in-depth research on this issue, also with regard to the negative consequences resulting from the closedness of the spaces in question.
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Shaping the enclosed recreational space of cohousing – results of pilot studies

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In this article, we will show the diversity of architectonic solutions that include water in the permanent structure of the object, which offers its prominent material and symbolic role. The method used for this research is the inquiry and the analysis of contemporary sacral things in which water plays the role of prima materiel. The research will use the author’s narrative method to analysed the architecture of meaning. This study of the architectonic piece will be led through five deliberate and narrative aspects, exploring the author’s intention – location, creation date, and narration, among others -project ideas. After a previous search, the project was selected as an example of meaningful objects. The objects are divided into four groups of signifiers: artificial landscape, ecological stream, memory space, and axiomatic medium. The research aimed to show that water as crematoria in meaningful objects does not only have a functional role, it also has a symbolic meaning. The current state of knowledge indicates that, at present, there are no scientific publications that analyse ‘water’ as an element of parametria. The water in architecture usually is analysed in practical and technical aspects; the semantic part of the project is generally excluded.
The question will be studied using projects or finished objects in contemporary sacral architecture.
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Water as the primary symbol of the sacred communication in the area of habitation architecture

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Senior citizens face numerous health problems, and their health deteriorates as they age. As a result, a significant proportion of older people’s budgets are spent on medication. Therefore, the authors of the study focused on the relationship between the influx of senior citizens to the city and the accessibility of one of the selected medical services, i.e., pharmacies. They established the place of residence of the migrating seniors using the obtained database. The distribution of 317 pharmacies located in the city of Krakow was also recorded. Thanks to these databases, it was possible to determine the housing environment of seniors after migration. The study revealed a favourable location of pharmacies. As far as it is concerned, they are concentrated mainly in the central districts of Krakow, as are the whereabouts where seniors settle after migration. As fa as the supplies are concerned, the study also aimed to identify new locations for pharmacies
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Availability of migrant seniors to pharmacies (Cracow case study)

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The general substance of Polish housing construction in cities is largely represented by buildings made in prefabricated, large panel technology. Traditional construction methods, with the use of earlier craftsmanship technologies, turned out to be too inefficient to meet the growing demand for apartments, and therefore in the 1920s, when the so-called “International style” was introduced, new materials and technologies paved the way for their use in the construction industry, i.e. slabs, steel, reinforced concrete and industrial methods of manufacturing elements. As a result, after 1945 in Europe, and from the end of the 1950s also in Poland, prefabricated large panel construction caught on. Compared to buildings made in other technologies, the analysed large panel buildings offer a number of advantages but are also marred with many drawbacks, nonetheless, this construction technology will still be in use in the nearest future.
The conducted studies and research of the field specific literature concern prospects of modern large panel construction, in this prospects of technical assumptions and directions of development of this specific concrete prefabricated construction technology. The aim of the conducted research and analyses is to show how modern architectural and technological solutions as well as functional and utility solutions can be adapted for the needs of multi-family residential buildings in order to ensure spacious rooms and full accessibility for people with reduced mobility. The article presents design analyses and options offered by modern large-size concrete elements in building technologies.
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On modern large-panel construction. Postulates of technical solutions and directions of development

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In recent decades, mass cultural tourism has imposed itself on European historic centres’ various economies without planning or a clear direction. Today, it is evident that this specific development within tourism is not sustainable and has generated a series of problems. Public space is a mirror of these transformations – congested, dirtied, polluted and impoverished of its traditional richness of co-presences and plurality of uses, it clearly demonstrates the limitations and problems that plague tourist cities. Following the temporary cessation of travel due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, tourism is now among the economic sectors undergoing a major recovery. This paper first broadly outlines a theoretical framework of overtourism. Then, it presents a case study of Florence, Italy, exploring the possible ways in which to mitigate the impact of tourist flows in the historic centre by designing public space in a sustainable manner that caters to the needs of both tourists and inhabitants.
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D. Sc. Ph.D., Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU)

Prof. D. Sc. Ph.D., Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU)

Cultural tourism pressure on historic centres: Its impact on public space and intervention strategies for its mitigation. Florence, Italy, as a case study

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This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary study conducted in 2018–2019 by a team of researchers from the CUT FA in collaboration with specialists in environmental psychology. The aim of the research was to discern the boundary values of the dimensions of a selected urban interior model in a multifamily housing environment in terms of the statistical user preferences. A research experiment was used in which a series of 18 virtual urban interiors were developed, which were observed and evaluated by respondents, who were administered a pre-prepared semantic differential questionnaire. The observation was performed in a VR environment for maximum research environment parameter control.
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Study of the Size of Urban Interiors in the Housing Environment from the Perspective of Human Preferences, Based on the Example of an Elongated Interior

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The contemporary housing environment in Europe is changing dynamically, influenced by factors related to the struggle against climate change and adverse demographic phenomena. The pace of change has also increased in response to the challenges posed by the pandemic, conflicts and the energy crisis. These reasons have started a process of change in the approach to the design of residential areas, directing the attention of designers towards meeting the needs linked to creating housing architecture that implements the postulates of connection to nature, inclusivity in response to cultural diversity, and sustainable design by extending the residential space to include rooms or facilities with a different use. The aim of the research presented in this paper was to diagnose the factors that influence the creation of an interior space that is conducive to intergenerational and intercultural integration. The study was carried out under the Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway grants programme (EOG/21/K4/W/0048W/0175). By assessing the elements of an interior’s composition, the factors that exclude as well as activate its space were examined, as were the spatial conditions that affect building its place-based identity and which influence its activation. The study’s conclusions are illustrated using projects prepared by second-year, first-cycle students at the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology, enrolled in Architecture and Architecture in English programmes.
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Interior: A Meeting Place for Cultures and Generations

AHEAD OF PRINT

Volume 46 (2024): Issue 1 (March 2024)

Volume 45 (2023): Issue 4 (December 2023)

Volume 44 (2023): Issue 3 (September 2023)

Volume 43 (2023): Issue 2 (June 2023)

Volume 42 (2023): Issue 1 (March 2023)

Volume 41 (2022): Issue 1 (December 2022)

Volume 40 (2022): Issue 1 (September 2022)

Volume 39 (2022): Issue 1 (June 2022)

Volume 38 (2022): Issue 1 (March 2022)

Środowisko Mieszkaniowe/Housing Environment

The journal 'Housing Environment' is an international periodical that has been published since 2003. It focuses on research related to the housing environment, which is understood as the fundamental living space and activity area for humans, satisfying their psycho-physical needs. The journal's aim is to connect architectural and urban aspects of living spaces with spatial planning, urban sociology, aesthetics, information technologies, and other scientific fields that influence contemporary housing environments. The housing environment is described as a space composed of both living and non-living elements that impact and are processed by humans. The physical shape of this space influences the well-being of its residents, addressing their need for safe shelter, psychological and physical comfort, hygiene conditions, a sense of belonging, a clean environment, and contact with nature. The journal is particularly interested in research concerning new phenomena in the architectural and urban design of living spaces, multidisciplinary activities that support research on the quality of the housing environment, the functioning of residential areas in modern cities, and solutions to dysfunctional problems related to the housing environment, such as those associated with climate change. The editorial team encourages the involvement of students in scientific work, and each issue of the journal publishes student design projects  Archiving Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections. Plagiarism Policy The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 