Wacław Seruga

This paper is devoted to matters of architectural design in the housing environment during the two decades of the development of twenty-first-century architecture and further in the future. Beauty, visual expression and composition move to the fore of contemporary designs of urban space. New visions and architectural designs emerge, individually shaped and with original forms that point to new trajectories in shaping space and functio-spatial solutions, both in the present and in the near future, creating optimal conditions for the existence of society in the housing environment.

This paper discusses matters related to beauty in the space of the housing environment, determining factors that affect the sensation of beauty in architectural and urban designs. The sense of beauty is a feature of a person’s individual perception, associated with a given period of time, and perceiving beauty and creative are among humanity’s most important characteristics. The mutual harmonious spatial relations between architecture and nature affect human perception and the perception of beauty in the housing environment. These matters have been presented using two cases of selected architectural and urban complexes.

The article focuses on issues relating to the process of shaping urban spaces from the point of view of composition and beauty in small residential developments. The Author presents the conceptual assumptions connected with functional and spatial shaping of sustainable residential complexes, among which the attitude towards nature constitutes the fundamental criterion influencing the spatial composition and the beauty of architecture. The Author also presents aspects which change the attitude towards the contemporary appearance and composition of a city, assuming a dominating role of the natural environment in shaping urban structures. The article presents twelve awarded architectural and urban designs by students of the 2nd year, prepared in the academic year 2014/2015 in the Chair of Housing Environment, Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology. In the field of aspects relating to the aesthetics and composition, there appeared tendencies aiming at composing urban spaces in a human scale, maintaining optimal sizes of surfaces of biologically active areas, remaining in close relations with the natural surroundings. In the Author’s opinion, due to the considerable threats for the planet caused by e.g. climatic changes, rapid natural increase and significant urbanization, in the functional and spatial shaping process and in composing urban spaces there will be a return to the idea of a garden city, in harmony and symbiosis with the nature surrounding it. The cities of the future will transform into gardens and will become self-sufficient in terms of energy.

The article discusses matters associated with lighting the architecture of detached houses in the context of nature, using natural sunlight. Single-family detached houses, which constitute the majority of dispersed buildings in the Polish landscape of cities and villages, have a significant impact on the quality of the space and human life within the residential environment. The priority in the shaping of modern human habitats that contain detached houses are the mutual relations between architecture and nature.
The article contains 16 architectural and urban designs by second-year students, developed during the 2016/2017 academic year at the Chair of the Shaping of the Housing Environment of the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. Tendencies towards adopting the dominant role of the sun as a priority in functional and spatial solutions appear in the concepts and visions of spatial detached houses.

The article has been devoted to the role of greenery and water in the shaping of contemporary urban spaces. The presented designs of green and water-based contemporary architectural and urban complexes contain feature mutual relations and links between the users of a space and the place in which they reside. Greenery and water play a significant role in the shaping of the architecture and composition of urban spaces. They create a warm atmosphere for initiating human contact and have a significant influence on the perception of the space of the place that they shape.

Greenery and water possess extraordinary qualities in architectural water-based and green designs of urban spaces associated with their visual side and the expression of architectural forms reflected in water, and especially the beauty of the surroundings of man’s place of residence. They constitute leading elements of nature in the shaping of a healthy, friendly and sustainable housing environment.

The paper discusses the issues tied with recreation in the architectural spaces of single-family detached houses located within the landscape outside of cities. Recreation plays a very important role in the space of a single-family detached house, as it is tied with the everyday life of a family. The paper presents thirteen award-winning architectural and urban designs developed by second year students during the 2015/2016 academic year, developed at the Chair of the Housing Environment of the Faculty of Architecture of the Cracow University of Technology. According to the author’s opinion, they illustrate the yearning for a life in a natural environment, surrounded by meadows, forests, lakes, mountains and seas, in isolation, peace and quiet. The efforts and dreams of inhabitants who want to be surrounded by nature every day have been reflected in the design and construction of residential areas in a housing environment that is strictly and mutually tied with the natural environment.

This article has been devoted to matters associated with man’s place of residence in the urban environment. In currently designed urban spaces, places assigned for human housing play a dominant role. They are characterised by assets associated with beauty and spatial composition and featuring optimal functional and spatial solutions in apartments and houses, linked with natural and architectural surroundings.

The paper discusses the problems tied to the shaping of urban recreational spaces of small residential complexes. Recreation needs to be acknowledged as belonging to a set of important functions of human settlements, apart from that of providing housing, as it considerably influences the maintaining of the optimal physical and mental condition of man, as well as his health.
The paper is a presentation of thirteen award winning architectural and urban designs that were developed by students within the academic year 2015/2016 at the Chair of the Housing Environment of the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology. In the opinion of the author, they illustrate the diversity of pursuits and experiments in the shaping of a healthy housing environment in terms of function and space. One quality of these original creations and visions is the pursuit of achieving the mutual interconnectedness of the functional and spatial relationships of apartments, homes and housing complexes with the natural environment that creates optimal conditions for recreation.

This article has been devoted to matters associated with rest and recreation in contemporary architectural and urban layouts. Eco-friendly and expressive architectural form, which, in combination with the natural environment, creates an attractive recreational space, plays an essential role in the urban and non-urban spaces that have been presented. The composition of the diversely shaped architectural and urban complexes features references to either the urban or the natural landscape, one in which rest and recreation take centre stage, creating an optimal and highly desirable place for man.

The article presents the Author’s school of teaching architectural and urban design, based on the inseparable approach towards architecture and urban planning and on strong relations between the theory of architecture and the designing and implementation practice, taught in the Chair of Housing Environment of the Faculty of Architecture, Cracow University of Technology, which reaches back to the early 1990s. The article also focuses on issues connected with the spatial composition of one-family detached houses. In the functional and spatial shaping of sustainable one-family residential complexes the relation towards nature constitutes a fundamental criterion influencing the spatial composition and the beauty of architecture. The article presents twenty-one students’ designs of one-family detached houses. According to the Author, they demonstrate diversified and individual creations and visions of functional and spatial solutions of houses, with reference to the landscape context, as well as they manifest the search of contemporary architectural forms and functional solutions of houses that fulfil individual needs of man of the second decade of the 21st century. In doing so, they prove an important role of architectural and urban spatial composition and beauty in shaping residential spaces in diversified locations and conditions of the surrounding area.

This paper concerns the problems of social spaces in man’s place of residence within residential complexes in the city. The degree of creativity and the quality of shaping social spaces determine the climate, intimacy and individuality of a residential complex, the diversity of urban places in man’s sustainable housing environment, his attitude towards the surroundings, landscape and nature as well as the scale and location of an urban layout. The quality of social spaces is bound with the development of civilization and the society’s awareness of the need for the development and existence of these spaces. This paper presents four examples of selected new residential complexes in Berlin and one example from Hamburg. They were analyzed which made it possible to define some aspects concerning the formation of new social spaces meant for the local community in a given place of residence as well as housing architecture with its vicinity inseparable from these spaces.

This paper concerns directions for the development of housing architecture and housing environment in the city of the future. The author bases the presented development forecasts upon an analysis of tendencies in the formation of housing architecture and housing environment within the first thirteen years of the twenty-first century in Europe taking the aspect of time, threats and Earth protection into consideration. The presented residential complexes located at the centre of Lyon (La Confluence) and in Graz (Messequartier) reveal a new approach to the issues of shaping places of residence, recreation and work in the man-surroundings and architecture-nature relations. The author poses a thesis that the future of housing architecture and housing environment will depend on the pace and degree of the economic development of the societies of the future as well as the political will of the world’s leading nations. The housing architecture of the future will be intelligent, sustainable, harmonized with the surroundings and nature. It will allow for social, economic, energy-saving and ecological objectives. There will be further development of new forms of residence with unknown composition and aesthetics in the intelligent and sustainable urban structures of the smart city of the future.

The article has been devoted to the design of water and greenery in the shaping of the architecture of single-family detached houses along with their surroundings. The creative functional and spatial solutions of detached single-family houses within the landscape in the relationships between man, architecture and nature affect the beauty of architecture and its perception. Original and creative architecture of single-family detached houses introduces order, structure and harmony into the design of urban spaces, as well as optima functional solutions, providing the best possible conditions for living, recreation and work in a natural housing environment. When designing the urban spaces of human habitats in a sustainable and environmentally friendly manner, in harmony with the natural environment, we should always remember that Earth is our collective home.

This paper is devoted to forecasts relating to the development of urbanized areas, human habitats, and residential architecture on our Earth. According to the Author, 21st century is a century of a new different approach to issues connected with shaping a city and diversified new forms of residence satisfying all expectations as a result of new current challenges, e.g. the ones connected with considerable climatic changes, protection of natural environment, the rate of natural increase or necessary needs, connected e.g. with the revitalization of degraded urban areas, etc.