Magdalena Celadyn

This research aims to identify the causes of flawed envelope components and materials, and conduct analyses of various exemplary selected cases. The intention was to find ways to extend the lifetime of building facades through suitable and recommended design measures to meet the sustainability requirements. Another goal of this paper is to identify principal errors committed in architectural design at spatial and technical scales, and also to suggest possible technical solutions to ensure the safety of façades. The method used is based on analyses of cases of building façade materials covering various types of buildings and building materials, and classifies them into three different types, which are illustrated and suitably assessed. The results of this work emphasize the insufficient care taken by designers to provide an effective performance of the analyzed building technologies applied to façades and that designers’ knowledge in this aspect of the design process should be enhanced.

This monograph was developed to demonstrate the relevance of designing interior spaces and their components while respecting the environmental context, and to address both the fulfilment of functional, formal, and aesthetic requirements in the buildings designed, as well as environmentally responsible architectural interior design.

Contemporary architecture is shaped by the paradigm of sustainability and is characteristic of many solutions determined by a relevant set of principles related to shaping the environment based on the ecology of systems focused on the flow of energy. These design principles concern gaining energy from renewable resources, protection against the loss of thermal energy from buildings, protection against the excess of thermal energy in buildings, and proper distribution of thermal energy in buildings. This paper presents a proposal for a method to analyze some building components used as sustainability-related elements given their formal similarity to historic architectural details or some artworks integrated with buildings. It aims to emphasize the potential of a different perspective from which to perceive and assess buildings, and specifically their architectural details, given their spatial and aesthetic values associated with sustainable technical solutions. This study is based on a few differentiated examples. It proves the relations mentioned above true, given the sustainability paradigm epitomized in technical solutions to contemporary buildings and the related aesthetic features characterizing the relevant architectural detailing. Such a perception of buildings is intended to promote unconventional viewing and assessment of them by the public and professionals in the area of architecture and art. It would make them discover new types of aesthetic values, which are usually invisible.

Technical durability and aesthetical longevity of building skins are among the fundamental demands of sustainable architecture in terms of building fabric’s physical changes due to deterioration. This concept paper presents a design concept intended to fill the existing gap related to the limited durability of buildings and non-existing design methods for its effective extension. The study concentrates on the anticipation and assimilation of disintegration processes occurring in time into the architectural design methodology to promote the design techniques focused on the visual expression of the coexistence of nature and the artificial in the function of time. This study investigates the building’s enclosure as an active boundary through which the building’s interaction with the natural environment occurs, as well as a regulator of the building’s energy performance and a factor conditioning their durability. The consideration of formal and esthetical deconstruction in architectural design is followed by the analyses of some relevant examples of completed buildings and cultural determinants underlying this issue. The proposed Apparent Destruction Architectural Design (ADAD) concept addresses the time-dependency of the building skins’ physical properties manifested by the deterioration, destruction and re-figuration of the building’s fabric. This design concept offers a solution to the disturbing problem of architecture’s impermanence enhances the issue of sustainability of the building’s fabric in time, becomes a means to search for the unconventional comprehension and vision of architecture, as well as to reframe the architectural design toward its compliance with sustainability postulates through the aesthetic concept.

This paper discusses the impact of advanced building techniques, in tune with selected building materials and their physical attributes, applied to complete constitutive interiors components on these components’ environmental performance and aesthetics. There is an understanding of technological practices as essential for the effective management of the design process; still, the creative introduction of advanced building techniques is not commonly recognized by interior architects. The objective of the research is to indicate the possible multidimensional consequences of the analysis of materials’ physical attributes and the consistent application of advanced building techniques to complete interior components. The basis for this study formed the design concepts of aesthetic functionalism, place attachment, and a content-context model of the association between interior components and the building fabric. Some theoretical frameworks were used for a qualitative evaluation of interior components of selected cultural facilities completed in the last decade in Poland. The performance of these components was measured in the function of applied innovative building techniques and specified building materials. Research findings have proved the impact of building techniques on the performance of interior components as instruments to increase interior functional use, formal uniformity, and aesthetic cohesion of buildings and their inner spaces, as well as the scale of multisensorial effectiveness.

The paper considers the adjustments of the interior architectural design education model toward its compliance with the principles of sustainability, since the currently provided scheme does not effectively employ the sustainability multi-dimensional concept as a substantial determinant of interior architectural design. The conventional interior architectural design curriculum requires corrections, to provide students with systematized knowledge on sustainability issues, as well as appropriate abilities and skills to create buildings’ interior spaces with high environmental performance. The modifications are considered using the example of a curriculum realized within the Faculty of Interior Design affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. These improvements of the curriculum structure comprise the establishment of a compulsory course on environmentally sustainable interior architectural design, offering to the undergraduate students comprehensive theoretical knowledge on the multi-dimensional aspects of sustainability and the introduction of professional design tools, including simplified versions of multi-criterial environmental evaluation systems, as a supportive educational means, as well as learning tools comprising interdisciplinary environmental-responsibility-oriented design workshops or seminars led by green building consultants and professionals involved in practicing sustainable interior design. This paper discusses the innovative concept of integrative design classes (IDC), realized within the practical modules of courses on Building Construction and Environmentally Sustainable Architectural Design, both delivered to undergraduate interior design students. The paper analyses these integrative design classes as a supportive project-based learning technique to develop the students’ ability to accomplish sustainable design strategies for resource efficiency, waste management effectiveness, optimization of indoor environment quality parameters as well as pro-environmental education. The results of the conducted integrative design classes proved that they are a driver for developing technically and formally innovative designs, allowing the students to establish a link between theoretical knowledge on sustainability in interior design and its practical implementation.

The paper discusses an interior architectural design model to enable the accomplishment of sustainable design strategy of efficient resources/waste management. The proposed design concept, referred to as interior architectural design for adaptive reuse, is based on the reintroduction of reclaimed or salvaged building construction materials and products acquired from demolished or refurbished building structural portions, into the structure of interior components. The presented design approach puts circular design methods and techniques in interior design practice at the core of environmentally responsible architectural design. To achieve its objectives, the implementation of resources efficiency strategy into the interior design scheme should remain a decisive interior design quality criterion. Meanwhile, the issues related to the environmental contextualization of interior spaces and their constitutive components, in fulfilment of sustainable design requirements for the conservation of natural resources, are neither sufficiently recognized by interior designers, nor appropriately highlighted in the current design practice. The main purpose of this concept paper is to develop a theoretical scheme for systemic inclusion of interior architectural design for adaptive reuse into the environmentally sustainable interior architectural design framework. This study provides interior designers with the concept of interior components design for the fulfilment of resources efficiency and waste management effectiveness.

Implementation of environmental responsibility issues into the interior design methodology considers many aspects of the design process, but analyzes them separately. These include building materials’ and products’ specifications based on the assessment of their parameters impact on the users of indoor environments, or resource management within an ecological efficiency context. This concept paper concentrates on the analysis of an environmental activation of inner space components, identified by the author as the holistic and systemic design model, which is to empower the foundation of a contemporary sustainable interior design model. The proposed design scheme is supposed to assure the environmental effectiveness of interiors and their structure, as well as complementing functional components. The contributions of interiors completed in accordance with this concept can refer to the enhancement of the performance of building mechanical systems and the improvement in the indoor environment quality parameters. They can be achieved with the appropriate environmental activation-oriented structural, technical, and material solutions, applied to the selected inner space components. The theoretical scheme presented should become the basis for further investigations and studies to establish the comprehensive methodology design framework assuring the integrative role of interior design in the creation of a sustainable near environment.