At present, climate change, pollution, and uncontrolled urbanism threaten not only natural ecosystems, but also the urban environment. Approaches to mitigate these challenges and able to provide an alternative for the use of the space are deemed to be multidisciplinary, combining architecture, vegetation integration, circular economy and information and communications technologies (ICT). University campuses are a key scenario to evaluate such solutions as their student and research community is intrinsically willing to support these experiences and provide a wide knowledge on the fields necessary for their design and implementation. However, the creation of areas combining usability and sustainability is commonly lacking a multidisciplinary approach combining all these different perspectives. Hence, the present work aims to overcome this limitation by the development of a novel integrated approach for campus spaces for co-working and leisure, namely a “Smart Tree”, where novel architecture, furniture design, flora integration, environmental sensoring and communications join together. To this end, a survey of the literature is provided, covering related approaches as well as general principles behind them. From this, the general requirements and constraints for the development of the Smart Tree area are identified, establishing the main interactions between the architecture, greening and ICT perspectives. Such requirements guide the proposed system design and implementation, whose impact on the environment is analyzed. Finally, the research challenges and lessons learned for their development are identified in order to support future works.

The sensitivity of the human eye varies with the different lighting conditions to which it is exposed. The cone photoreceptors perceive the color and work for illuminance conditions greater than 3.00 cd/m² (photopic vision). Below 0.01 cd/m², the rods are the cells that assume this function (scotopic vision). Both types of photoreceptors work coordinately in the interval between these values (mesopic vision). Each mechanism generates a different spectral sensibility. In this work, the emission spectra of common sources in present public lighting installations are analyzed and their normative photopic values translated to the corresponding mesopic condition, which more faithfully represents the vision mechanism of our eyes in these conditions. Based on a common street urban configuration (ME6), we generated a large set of simulations to determine the ideal light point setup configuration (luminance and light point height vs. poles distance ratio) for each case of spectrum source. Finally, we analyze the derived energy variation from each design possibility. The results obtained may contribute to improving the criterion of light source selection and adapting the required regulatory values to the human eye vision process under normalized artificial street lighting condition, reaching an average energy saving of 15% and a reduction of 8% in terms of points of light required. They also offer a statistical range of energy requirements for lighting installation that can be used to generate accurate electrical designs or estimations without the necessity of defining the exact lighting configuration, which is 77.5% lower than conventional design criteria.

Most European cities use prefabricated cement-based materials to transform public spaces to be used by citizens. These facilities must be resistant, economic, functional and, above all, sustainable. Furthermore, civil works have a very high consumption level of raw materials and energy, which implies high environmental emissions. Ecodesign is a response to comply with these criteria throughout the lifecycle of a product in order to prevent or reduce its environmental impact. The Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology allows for evaluating all the processes related to a product, to identify key points and to establish a strategy for improvement. The main objective of this work is to show the results of the application of the LCA for the common precast concrete pavers used in civil works, analyzing their entire life cycle: from obtaining the raw materials for their production to the pavers’ end of life. The main reason for this LCA is to assess the environmental performance at the various stages of their life cycle and the environmental burdens associated with these stages, so that possible improvements can be identified.