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Tiny houses and buildings, as well as their associated lifestyles, have become a global phenomenon which is receiving a significant amount of media attention, in addition to being quite popular on the Internet. While living in a tiny house may seem attractive to and is even celebrated by some, the usable floor areas offered by most such buildings are far below what would currently be considered a proper housing standard and therefore can be considered as having a detrimental impact on quality of life. In the artic...

There are a number of traffic calming measures that can be employed to protect vulnerable road users (VRU). Traffic calming is of critical importance in small towns and villages crossed by regional roads where it is necessary to resolve a number of conflicting traffic-related interests on stretch of a road that is just 500 m to 1,200 m long. Pedestrian refuges are one of the most common measures used to protect vulnerable road users. Considering the statutory speed limit of 50 km/h applying in daytime to all roads...

Very large trees are considered as key green structures in an urban green infrastructure. Due to the general focus on old and very large trees (with high aesthetic values in green urban areas), there is a significant knowledge gap related to the role of young trees in cities. This study is based on results of field mapping of cultural important trees in the urban area of the famous European historical city of Prague. We have investigated both very large and young trees ? just only trees with function of living sym...

Buildings are responsible from 25% to 30% of greenhouse gases production, contributing significantly to global warming. One approach to limiting greenhouse gas production is construction and operation of buildings according to the principles of sustainable construction. There are 113 certified buildings in the Czech Republic. 57% of the total consists of an office building. For this purpose, the LEED and BREEAM global certification programs and one local certification program, SB TOOL CZ, are used in the Czech Rep...

Daylight is very important at work. Natural daylight is a vital element in our daily life. Providing natural daylight into the working environment is of fundamental importance for the comfort, efficiency and safety for the people in that environment. This paper deals with visual comfort evaluation in administrative building, in office spaces. The human eye is able to perceive light at the moment it occurs. It cannot accumulate or move it in the human body for future use. Light perception is a complex process that ...

A long term EU effort is to reduce CO2 emissions in order to stabilize climatic changes. Reducing buildings energy consumption is a necessary step to achieve this goal. Since 2020 all new buildings in Czech Republic must be designed as nearly zero energy. It sets low energy consumption requirements as well as requirements on indoor environment quality. However one third of residential buildings in Czech Republic was built before the year 1945 and does not meet these demands. Refurbishments of these buildings shoul...

The Prague Housing Fund has consisted of houses built by heavy prefabrication system between 1950 and 1990 to a large extent. These houses are being continuously renovated. The refurbishment emphasizes the reduction of energy losses and neglects other factors of the indoor environment (air exchange, humidity, overheating, etc.). The article deals with the above-mentioned problems of interior overheating in terms of the effect of shading elements on the appearance of facades. It assesses several types of shading wi...