While searching for valuable wall paintings, examinations may also reveal the colour scheme of the whole interiors. Such discoveries deepen our knowledge about trends in historic design in the Lower Silesia region and are used in conservation for preserving monuments closer to their original state. Selected results from examinations conducted by conservators in secular public and residential buildings from the Middle Ages to the 20th century are presented in this article.

Tourists are tired of mass tourism and are therefore seeking places and experiences they could call genuine and different. In city tourism, focus is being increasingly shifted towards direct and authentic experience of urban space through spontaneous contact with the space itself and the inhabitants who create it. The authors, on the basis of three Polish cities being known as tourist destinations, analyzes the role of backyards and lanes in building up the identity of a city and the way their image as a tourist attraction is created.

Green walls are used as one of methods which for many years have been used to enhance the appearance of building elevations. They make it possible to introduce greenery into urbanised areas, which are often limited by the size of the building plot. They add an excellent aesthetic dimension to the so called ‘blind’ walls found in city centres. Green walls not only bring with them an element of beauty and integration with nature, but by being used to a wider extent, could also have a positive impact on the city’s micro-climate. Various technologies enable the creation of green walls on the outside of buildings as well as in semi-open spaces and interiors. In this paper, five different techniques of setting up living walls are described, from the relatively simple technique of planting climbers that easily cover bare walls to modular panel systems or green wall systems with flower pots to ‘living wall’ solutions and finally, to Patrick Blanc’s highly sophisticated patented vertical garden technology.

After the almost total disappearance of trams in the first half of the 20th century, a rapid growth of tram networks has been observed in French cities since 1985. Initially, trams were perceived only as a means of public transportation, however, they gradually became an important urban tool and a catalyst for the thorough restructuring of public spaces. At present, tram lines in France are a symbol of a modern approach and an expression of pro-environmental ambitions of French cities.

The purpose of the article is to describe the complexity index as a quantitative parameter and indicate the position in the hierarchy of factors affecting urban riverside landscape on the example of the Odra River in Wroclaw.

Narrativeness, often manifested by direct, figurative way, sometimes also encoded within the abstraction, is the essence of stained glass paintings in church interiors. One of the ways of reading the ambiguous content is to define mutual relationship of form and the imagery hidden in stained glass, as well as to diagnose the imaging methods adopted by the artist in the context of sacred architectural space. The aim of this paper is to analyze in that way selected works created after the Second Vatican Council (1962‒1965), which complement the interiors of the Krakow churches.

In this article, the territorial aspects of the idea of tomorrow’s house are viewed from two perspectives; the theory of urbanism, and as a technical issue concerning the formulation of principles of a spatial policy towards the housing environment as well as respective planning techniques with particular reference to the code of practice developed in order to translate these policies into specific regulations and design guidelines. In planning practice, concretizing the general rules of a spatial policy requires a reference to structural urban units. However, while defining their properties in spatial planning documents, we ought to pay more attention to the relationship between the architectural and anthropological attributes of this category of urbanized space and its impact on the utilitarian values of a place of residence. The author also indicates some interdependences between the land use planning techniques, applied as environmental policy tools dedicated specifically to urban structural units, and respective policy statements used in socio-economic planning to guide housing development in accordance with strategic goals. Certain similarities between these strategies are presented as are such theoretical concepts as the architecture of the city, space syntax or the just city.