Although the application of concrete in the visual arts is not as wide as in the construction industry, it reflects diverse artistic attitudes and expectations regarding this material. We come across its use mostly in public space, being a natural space for concrete. When it comes to small-scale sculptures exhibited in art galleries, concrete is not found that often. Sculpture is a vastfield dominated from one hand by traditional materials such as bronze, stone, ceramics, but also open to spatial and material experiments. The articles presents a number of concrete use cases in the creative way: its method, the output, and the conclusions. The aim of the project was to depart from the typical architectural function of concrete and to present it as the flexible one that enables one to take advantage of its expressive features. As a result, a set of works called “The Silence of Forms” was created, which was fully or partially presented in some art exhibitions in the years 2019-2021.
At the time of reflection on green justice, when the role of public green spaces is increasing, it is worth paying attention to vernacular greenery, especially in single-family residential areas on city outskirts which property owners arrange in front parts of plots. The paper’s aim is to show that vernacular front gardens (VFG) can act as missing public space and at the same time have the attributes of public green space, providing ecosystem services (ES). In order to confirm these assumptions, we carried out a VFG’s attributes inventory and a survey on garden designers. We identified dominating garden features and conducted a cluster analysis of the gardens based on their characteristics. The basis for building periurban streetscape in single-family housing estates is the visual inclusiveness of VFGs. They provide all the ES groups, playing representational, natural and recreational roles as well as serving as locations of edible plants production. Streets in residential sites, thanks to VFG, can be treated as real green public spaces creating a type of green area accessible not only to owners but also to pedestrian eyes. We conclude that our results can be valuable for city planning but also for the professional garden designers.
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