The fact that people spend a major part of their lifetime indoors, together with the lethal COVID-19 pandemic which caused people to spend even more time inside buildings, has drawn attention to the significance of achieving Agenda 2030 SD goal number three: good health and well-being, in reference to the indoor environment. The research subject is the health and well-being of building users explored through the sustainable (passive) design principles having an impact on the comfort and quality of the indoor environment. It is set within a regenerative sustainability framework encompassing the physiological, biophilic, psychological and social aspects of comfort. The Comfort Assessment Model’s categories, to some extent, rely on the first author’s doctoral thesis, with further modifications regarding the passive design criteria and indicators. A comparative analysis of the model with international sustainability certification (rating) systems has been performed, proving the significance of introducing more passive design comfort (health) related criteria into sustainability assessment models. In addition, a focus group of expert architects contributed to the research conclusions by responding to a questionnaire addressing the issues of sustainability, comfort and passive design, in terms of the health and well-being of building users, which confirmed the relevance of applied passive design measures for providing comfort indoors and fulfilling sustainable development goals.

The concept of sustainable cities and communities is endorsed as one of the seventeen goals of sustainable development. Since buildings represent an essential element of the city, they play a primary role in achieving the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of cities. Previous studies have pointed to the lack of emphasis on the social aspect of buildings. Aiming to fill the gap, this research is focused on identifying barriers that hinder the adoption of social sustainability (SS) measures and practices in residential buildings, as a first step in overcoming these barriers and enabling faster achievement of SS goals. The initial platform of barriers was derived from a comprehensive review of the published literature, international reports, and green building rating systems. For the selection of critical barriers, the Delphi method was used with the participation of 60 international experts. Of 58 barriers initially identified from the literature and experts’ suggestions, 29 were selected as important and classified into five groups. Further, in each of these groups three barriers were singled out, the overcoming of which would facilitate and speed up buildings’ SS to the greatest extent. These results provide insight into barriers to SS for policy makers, developers, and planners, invite further studies on this topic, and provide a starting point for other researchers to identify the most relevant barriers in different contexts, i.e., countries and regions with their specific characteristics. This will further create the conditions for the elimination of barriers to SS by focusing on the most critical issues.

Over the recent decades, the concept of social sustainability (SS) has been increasingly recognized as a key component of sustainable development incorporated in sustainable communities’ agendas. However, SS measures and practices have been insufficiently applied and underrepresented with regard to residential buildings. The aim of this paper is to employ experts’ perspectives to identify interdisciplinary, multilevel strategies/drivers for the integration of SS measures and practices into governmental and operational activities in relation to residential buildings. The selected strategies emerged from a detailed literature review and a two-round Delphi survey collecting responses from an expert panel, which were carried out in order to determine the relevancy of the proposed strategies. Of the 38 preselected strategies, 32 were deemed significant. In addition to a number of relevant strategies, the panelists especially recommended disseminating new concepts of growth that would contribute to breaking the link between materialism and social progress and to the adoption of new ways of life characterized by a more harmonious and healthy coexistence of people and the environment. They also suggested a gradual introduction of SS principles into value systems and their implementation in all aspects of personal and social life as an essential precondition for achieving the goals of sustainable development on a large scale. These results lay the groundwork for the incorporation and development of SS strategies by policy makers, developers, and planners and provide a starting point that will allow other researchers to identify the most relevant strategies in different contexts, i.e., countries and regions with their specific characteristics, which will further create the conditions for the more efficient implementation of SS measures and practices and contribute to the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Architecture of the 20th century as a Cultural Heritage : Architectural Communication – Memorial Hall in Kolasin, Montenegro

Natural and Culturo-Historical Region of Kotor, Boka Bay, Montenegro, is well known for its exceptional beauty, evaluated by UNESCO. The unique universal value has been embodied in the cultural landscape: vernacular architecture harmonized with the cultivated terraced landscape on the slopes of high, rocky mountains. Kostanjica is an old settlement in Boka Bay, former fishermen village, recognized for valuable elements of the cultural landscape: chestnut tree and laurel forest, terraced gardens with arable land, fruit gardens, traditional architecture in stone: clusters of houses, piers and docks, pedestrian pathways, pavements, retaining walls, well-integrated in the autochthone Mediterranean vegetation. Since Montenegro has pronounced itself Ecological state in 1991, environmental protection has become the highest priority in all Sustainable Development agendas and policies. Furthermore, preservation of regional peculiarity and fostering distinctive identity of a place, is one of the crucial sustainable development goals. The ongoing development of tourist resort “Boka Gardens” in Kostanjica has revealed these harmful, unsustainable tendencies in Montenegro. On the grounds of investor’s urban planning and profit-driven architecture, the unique and valuable cultural landscape of Kostanjica has been devastated to the extent that Boka Bay’s UNESCO status has been jeopardized. The paper researches cause of this damaging phenomena, seeking for ways of overcoming profoundly harmful building practices, thus leading to a more efficient and sustainable urban development.

The estimates are that we spend majority of our lifetime indoors. Therefore, the quality of indoor environment is crucial to our health. Thermal comfort is amongst the most energy-related aspects of comfort since the energy requirements for heating and cooling refer to more than a half of energy needs in buildings. Passive solar architecture, emerged from the archetypal builders’ responses to the natural environment, by using the energy of the sun for heating and cooling in the most economical and rational way- by applying the laws of physics. The key passive solar architectural principles aimed at achieving thermal comfort presented in the paper are: adaptive thermal comfort (the comfortable indoor temperature levels adjusting to the outside temperature), thermal zoning (variety in disposition and orientation of the different functional zones), and thermal mass (using building materials with ability to effectively store heat), all aimed at enhancing energy efficiency and providing a healthy indoor environment.