Modern environmental protection standards have a direct impact on the construction and shaping of public space. Designers are increasingly reaching for materials produced via recycling technologies. Waste materials are more readily adopted and used in urban planning and architecture. Current projects in this area are being increasingly designed to meet the requirements of the circular economy, which is facilitated by the reuse of once-used components. The aim of the study is to review research papers in the Scopus database (bibliometric analysis) and other selected materials applied in construction, which are recycled and used again in various ways in the construction of subsequent buildings. The results show various application possibilities of recycled materials in construction. The study draws attention to the fact that the use of recycled materials in modern construction is becoming more and more effective, which may contribute to increasing the share of the circular economy in the implementation process related to this subject.

The present article aims to investigate the issue of recycling building materials. The subject area was determined with regards to building materials’ use and the related environmental costs. The research methodology comprised source materials, as well as the analyses and experiments conducted by the authors. The obtained research results present the current trends and definitions of terms related to the presented issues. Re-development potential and methods regarding the most typical building materials, as well as the main architectural trends towards using recycled materials, are presented in the article.

Thermal waste transformation plants (waste incineration plants) are a strong architectural accent in the existing site context. They often function as power plants or combined heat and power plants, producing heat and/or electricity by recovering energy from flue gases. The main objective of this study was to demonstrate the relationship between the architectural quality and protection of the natural environment through the technological solutions applied. The indirect aims of the study include the demonstration of the educational message conveyed through architectural and environmental solutions. The relationships defined by the objective were verified in comparative studies of eight operating waste incineration plants in Poland, located in: Bialystok, Bydgoszcz, Konin, Krakow, Poznan, Rzeszow, Szczecin, and Warsaw. The results were presented in three problem areas: (i) architectural quality, (ii) environmental solutions, and (iii) educational message. The results of the study led to the following conclusions: (i) waste incineration plants operating in Poland show a relationship between the architectural quality and broadly understood pro-environmental solutions, (ii) and all waste incineration plants operating in Poland show educational solutions.