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 paper aimed to seek for ways of overcoming profoundly harmful building practices, thus leading to the more efficient and sustainable urban development. .

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.

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.

The overall history of culture is an evolution of the communication media [1] and, as a cultural phenomenon, architecture is a communication phenomenon itself [2]. The most significant progress in understanding architecture as a means of communication was made in the 20 th century, first, with the onset of semiotics (F. de Saussure, Ch. S. Peirce) and structuralistic theories, theory of information and later by post-structuralism and post-modernism [3]. The first analogies between semiotics and architecture as well as the application of linguistic models appeared (Gamberini 1953, Koenig 1964 in the '50s and '60s of the 20 th century. This enabled seeing the phenomenon of architecture as a readable text of culture. The elements of semiotic theories have found their application in architecture too. Saussure's semiotic dichotomy "signifier/signified" applied to architecture shows that edifice is at the same time the signified, as a result of concepts or ideas, and the signifier of a sign, namely, the form is a communication medium between the concept and the sign [4] (Fig. 1). [6,.Architectural communication is defined through three types of relations which a building establishes with its environment: building -context (social and physical), building -users (utilization of architecture) and building -author/architect (architecture as knowledge transmission) [7]. Denotative and connotative meanings, taken from the semiotics (Eco), constitute an integral part of relations defined in such a manner, but they are not the basic approach in understanding the phenomenon of architectural communication [7] (Fig. 2).Memorial Hall in Kolasin, cultural heritage of the second half of 20 th century, has been chosen as the case study suitable for architectural communication analysis, based on the previously defined model. The building, with the gross floor area of 2,500 м2, located on the main town square was built from 1971 to 1975 according to the winning design of a Slovenian architect Marko Music, who won the first prize at the Yugoslav architectureurbanism competition in 1970 (Fig. 3). The building was awarded

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.