The urge for the sustainable character of buildings, resulting from the search for a contemporary relation between architecture and nature as well as attention to natural resources, has influenced the image of today’s human living environment. More and more frequently, such natural elements as water or greenery are applied in the composition of structures or architectural and urban enclosures. The application of these elements usually results from their technical and functional values – the ability to accumulate energy, to support the preservation of native ecosystems, to purify water, to create the microclimate of an enclosure, to convert carbon dioxide etc. Owing to some rediscovered building materials, however, their appearance produces a brand new image of architecture bound with the surroundings. The architecture-nature relationship does not only proceed at the meeting point of a building and its surroundings anymore. Structures form a landscape with respect for the topography and biological characteristics of a given area, whereas natural elements penetrate into an enclosure producing a kind of an extended entrance zone blurring the borders between a building and its surroundings. At the same time, architecture tries to recreate the relationship between Man and Nature making a favourable environment meant for residence, work and recreation introducing a new aesthetical and social dimension within the architecture-nature relation.

The urge for the sustainable character of buildings, resulting from the search for a contemporary relation between architecture and nature as well as attention to natural resources, has influenced the image of today’s human living environment. More and more frequently, such natural elements as water or greenery are applied in the composition of structures or architectural and urban enclosures. The application of these elements usually results from their technical and functional values – the ability to accumulate energy, to support the preservation of native ecosystems, to purify water, to create the microclimate of an enclosure, to convert carbon dioxide etc. Owing to some rediscovered building materials, however, their appearance produces a brand new image of architecture bound with the surroundings. The architecture-nature relationship does not only proceed at the meeting point of a building and its surroundings anymore. Structures form a landscape with respect for the topography and biological characteristics of a given area, whereas natural elements penetrate into an enclosure producing a kind of an extended entrance zone blurring the borders between a building and its surroundings. At the same time, architecture tries to recreate the relationship between Man and Nature making a favourable environment meant for residence, work and recreation introducing a new aesthetical and social dimension within the architecture-nature relation.