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Over the past two decades, the expanding environmental and ecological crises highlight the need to broaden the concept of sustainability to encompass support for cultural sensitivity and social well-being. This study explores the role of architectural education in fostering cultural sensitivity and social well-being in embassy architecture within a framework of environment–behavior studies. It starts from the premise that the architectural values of a culture are deeply rooted in the relationship between the users, architecture, and surrounding environment. State-sponsored architectural works (e.g., embassies, consulates, cultural centers) built outside the country are viewed as symbolic representations of a nation’s diplomatic and cultural influence. These architectural typologies hold a unique potential to act as bridges for cross-cultural dialogue and foster a collective sense of global citizenship. In order to develop and assess the teaching curriculum, a specific assignment was given to master’s students of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade, with the aim to explore how engineering education can be adopted to motivate students toward sustainable attitudes and design solutions. While traditional diplomatic architecture emphasizes inward-facing, fortress-like design strategies, establishing physical and symbolic barriers between the embassy’s territory and the surrounding context, this research advocates for a more holistic approach oriented toward cultural sustainability, openness, and integration within an urban context. Key findings highlight creative solutions for balancing cultural representation with functional requirements while prioritizing community engagement, environmental responsibility, and user well-being. By demonstrating the two distinctive architectural strategies, this study contributes to the culturally responsive embassy design within the broader context of sustainable architectural education.

This paper presents the results of an integrated research and design process developed within the Master’s study programme in Architecture at the University of Belgrade—Faculty of Architecture, aimed at exploring architectural agency in conditions of ecological degradation, declining biodiversity, and the urgent need for regenerative transformation of the built environment. Moving beyond technologically driven notions of “green design,” the study investigates architectural approaches that support ecosystem restoration, biodiversity enhancement, and multispecies coexistence while strengthening health and well-being. Grounded in a three-phase methodological framework, the research (1) formulates conceptual models of therapeutic landscapes through typo-morphological, place-based, and adventure-based analytical approaches; (2) evaluates these models using the New European Bauhaus (NEB) Checklist to assess their alignment with the core values of sustainability, beauty, and togetherness; and (3) synthesizes the findings into regenerative design scenarios that integrate ecological processes, multisensory experience, and community participation. The results position therapeutic landscapes as a spatial practice in which architecture functions as ecological infrastructure, a metabolic system where natural cycles, cultural meanings, bodily experiences, and more-than-human agencies interact. In this sense, architectural design becomes the basis for re-naturalization, regeneration, ecological care, multisensory experience, and resilience in urban, peri-urban, and rural communities.

This study investigates whether spa settlements can be analytically interpreted through a relational spascape framework that reveals structural and configurational patterns beyond conventional typological classifications. In the context of increasing interest in therapeutic landscapes and heritage-sensitive development, spa settlements represent complex spatial systems shaped by the interplay of natural resources, urban form, and socio-cultural practices, yet they remain insufficiently understood through existing analytical models. The methodology is based on a structured analytical design combining three urbanization dimensions (material transformation, territorial regulation, and everyday life) with six thematic fields, operationalized through graded cross-affiliation scoring. The empirical research is conducted on a sample of 12 spa settlements in Serbia, selected to reflect diverse geographical, morphological, and developmental conditions. Statistical calibration was performed using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering to identify underlying structural relationships and configurational groupings. The results indicate that spa settlements operate as multi-affiliated relational entities rather than fixed typologies, exhibiting dimension-specific structural logics and forming distinct configurational families depending on the analytical perspective applied. PCA reveals differentiated internal structures across dimensions, while clustering confirms the absence of a single stable typology. The findings support a relational understanding of spa settlements as dynamic spatial systems characterized by shifting alignments of material, regulatory, and experiential factors. Beyond the Serbian context, the study offers a transferable methodological framework that connects qualitative urban interpretation with quantitative spatial analysis, contributing to heritage-sensitive planning, territorial governance, and the management of spa systems as relational clusters.

This study investigates the intersection of digital tools and methods with the built environment disciplinary framework, focusing on Urban Planning and Development (UPD), Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC), and Cultural Heritage (CH) domains. Using a systematic literature review of 29 solution-oriented documents, the research applies both bibliometric and in-depth content analysis to identify methodological patterns. Co-occurrence mapping revealed four thematic clusters—Data Integration and User-Centric Analysis, Advanced 3D Spatial Analysis and Processing, Real-Time Interaction and Digital Twin Support, and 3D Visualization—each corresponding to distinct stages in a digital workflow, from data acquisition to interactive communication. Comparative and interdependency analyses demonstrated that these clusters operate in a sequential yet interconnected manner, with Data Integration forming the foundation for analysis, simulation, and visualization tasks. While current solutions are robust within individual stages, they remain fragmented, indicating a need for systemic interoperability. The findings underscore the opportunity to develop integrated digital platforms that synthesize these clusters, enabling more comprehensive observation, management, and planning of the built environment. Such integration could strengthen decision-making frameworks, enhance public participation, and advance sustainable, smart city development.

This paper addresses the challenges of architectural higher education to cope with a state of continuous change within the relationship between heritage and sustainability. The initial assumption is that research activities based on design taxonomies—terms used in architectural discourse of heritage and sustainability—followed by fruitful analysis and discussion can contribute to the advancements in curricula design and development. Accordingly, the paper aims to develop a new methodological framework for addressing sustainability and heritage, enriching curricula design and assessment strategy. Data collection on identification and analysis of terms was carried out within the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership titled Enhancing of Heritage Awareness and Sustainability of Built Environment in Architectural and Urban Design Higher Education (HERSUS). After the process of filtering, interpretation, and comparison of project findings, a three-fold comprehensive analysis was conducted: (a) learning outcome quantitative analysis, (b) cross-cutting analysis of spatial scales and course types, and (c) synthesis. The paper results in the methodological framework that reinforces different pedagogical approaches to heritage and sustainability derived as a result of the applied research process. The main conclusions are concerned with the applicability of the methodological framework, designed for the improvement of existing and development of new comprehensive courses and programme contents.

This paper considers the landscape as both a material and an ideological representation and starts from the assumption that spatial patterns arise as a result of the ideological imperative of the process that forms the landscape. The research takes on a historical-interpretative approach in the domain of architectural and urban studies, enabling in-depth qualitative exploration of the textuality and layering of the modernist rural landscape through a case study of the PKB Agricultural Combine as a driver of the urban development of Third Belgrade, the spatial framework of the left riverbank of the Danube in the administrative area of Belgrade. The research was conducted by chronologically interpreting primary sources, notably planning documents of different levels and scope, as well as studies, programs and development models for the urbanization of this territory. The research aims to decode the impact of socialist agrarian policy on the land-use in the wider metropolitan area of Belgrade, as well as the impact of the agricultural combine as a spatial, social, economic, environmental and political entity on the urban development process at different spatial levels. The research has identified four periods in the development of Third Belgrade: (1) Production of the Modernist Rural Landscape, (2) Establishment of the Self-Management Planning Framework, (3) Humanization of Environment, and (4) Post-socialist Transition and the Collapse of the Agricultural Combine. The paper demonstrates not only that environmental transformation cannot be separated from social transformation but also that they are in constant interaction and that their synergy has had a profound impact on the development of the PKB Agricultural Combine system in socialist conditions. The textuality of the modernist rural landscape confirms that an object-oriented approach is not enough to explore and interpret the landscape, but rather, we should look at the way it is socially produced through decoding the planning, institutional and policy frameworks determining the urban development of a territory.

This paper advocates the stance that sustainable approaches in architecture, although usually associated to contemporary practice, have a very complex relationship with the history of architecture and urbanism. By adopting an interpretative framework, the paper highlights the environmental aspects of the architectural practice of Belgrade’s large-scale residential settlements created under the cultural influences of socialist ideology. The socialist system enabled systematic implementation of the principles of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) on a large urban scale, in contrast to capitalist countries where these principles were applied on a smaller scale. The paper starts with the premise that these cultural influences, together with the integration of the principles of modernism, caused the rejection and the loss of traditional and ambience values in architecture. Research has shown that these values play a very important role in meeting the needs of ecological and cultural sensitivity in architecture. In its final consequences, the results of research have revealed that, although widely criticized for its break with tradition and the loss of ambience values, residential architecture in Belgrade during the socialist era included significant aspirations of the architectural practice directed at the improvement of aspects of sustainability, and especially aspects of ecological and cultural sensitivity.

This article addresses the contemporary framework of housing at the EU level in the era of the ‘Housing at the Centre’ approach. More specifically, the research focuses on mass housing neighbourhoods (MHN) as the leading pattern of urban transformation in European cities in the second half of the 20th century, with the intention being to decode the possibilities for its rehabilitation in line with integrated approaches. The article combines (1) a review-based and systematically-oriented approach, in order to provide a state of the art of EU design taxonomy related to the housing issue, and, more specifically, related to MHN, with (2) a comparative study between EU and national design taxonomies, in order to address their conditionality and possible mismatches. The research considers design taxonomy to gain a more comprehensive insight into the content and coherence between programme values and the relevant EU documents (declarations, statements, policy positions, resolutions, reports, communications, charters, action plans, opinions) related to the housing issue, or broader urban issues that include housing as the scope of observation. The taxonomy enables a conceptual methodological framework for a systematic, consistent, and complete description of key research relations. Accordingly, the specific objective of this article is to establish an evaluation framework for reprogramming of MHN based on the EU design taxonomy through (1) the development of the programming matrix for evaluation, which corresponds to the value-based architectural programming model; and (2) introducing Serbian national design taxonomy, in order to demonstrate the anticipation of design values based on the EU taxonomy within the local context. The results indicate the need to examine and test regulatory experimental settings through middle-out approaches, whose central research perspective will be built parallel and coherently through bottom-up inputs, created as the result of collaborative approaches at the community level, and top-down inputs which are the result of the strategic framework established in relation to priorities at the European level.

This paper is built on the assumption that architecture is the establishment of the relationship between past and future, built and unbuilt, within the inherited and natural context and in direct connection with the overall culture. Unlike a traditional approach to heritage generally limited to considering only the visible values of the place, this research stands on the belief that, in the context of heritage, the implementation and application of behavioral knowledge in architectural discourse contributes to the intensification and enhancement of these relations. In accordance with the need to re-examine existing and explore new forms of the relationship between future life of heritage and social wellbeing, the main goal of the research is to examine the possibility of improving this relationship through a value-based architectural programming methodological framework. This paper was conducted through: (1) theoretical framework that intertwines environment–behavior theories and architectural programming as the value-matrix methodology for the reuse of heritage; (2) exploring the established framework through design results gathered within the design-based studio on “heritage reprogramming” at the University of Belgrade—Faculty of Architecture with a particular focus on the modernist architectural heritage; and (3) discussing the overall principles through the multiscale and value-based approach. The evaluation of the results indicates the possibility of improving the social dimension of heritage protection and reuse, as well as the need to shift the focus from exclusively material and formal values of heritage to social and cultural aspects in accordance with the needs of contemporary society and culture. Results indicate that the multidimensional nature of architectural programming methodological approach in the context of modern heritage and, accordingly, the synergy of different programming values (environmental, human, social, systemic, temporal, economic, aesthetic) provides sustainable access to heritage and has the capacity to improve the social wellbeing of individual users but also of the wider community.

Over the past decade, urban housing typologies have evolved from being a feature of modern life to an essential postmodern issue, questioning future housing identities. One of the ways in which architecture can become engaged in this ever-changing process of urban regeneration is to challenge the inherited traditional housing typologies with the newly recognized values of contemporary lifestyle. This paper presents research and design aimed at exploring contemporary sustainable urban lifestyles as a resource for positioning housing structures as cultural urban infrastructure. The main focus of this study is design principles and strategies for generating future housing identities in accordance with sustainable urban development and sustainability of life in urban areas. It is about finding housing conceptual models for an interaction between housing and identity as a response to the impact of increased cities, changed lifestyles in contemporary cities and the requirements for the preservation of the city image and the public space within the housing areas in the city center. The main goal of this study is to understand whether and how an architectural design can preserve a sustainability of life within the city center and become a valuable agent of place identity in the process of urban regeneration. The paper indicates that the contemporary development of society requires a new architectural paradigm, in which lifestyle and architecture create a unique elastic open-ended system with the ability to adapt and change over time and throughout the place.