The paper presents the results of the research on the assessment of environmental conditions in selected university buildings — focused on building-surroundings relations. The research was conducted in 5 buildings in a few academic centers in Poland, using questionnaire technique. The respondents were students of architecture, art, psychology and landscape architecture, in the surveyed buildings (N=184). Analysis of the results — apart from the main finding of the general lack of the ‘space for students’ (including both individual workplaces and recreational spaces) — revealed the important role of the surroundings for the way of use and description of the buildings. ‘Location’ and generally ‘external’ elements such as garden, greenery and small architecture for recreation, the ‘edges’ of the building (such as the elevation and the roof) as well as the direct visual connections, constituted the largest group among all respondents’ ‘strengths’ of analyzed buildings. A significant and puzzling exception in this group is the latest in the analyzed WICA building in Lublin — best evaluated in terms of functionality but also described with the most neutral terms (on the ‘positive’ scale), whose students (N=31) in their assessments and descriptions do not take into account (or do not notice) the building-environment relationship. The analysis of the results revealed individualized image of the places. ‘Functionality’ occured to be not the only one predictor of behavioral and emotional bonds with places; the important role is also — as it seems — played by a ‘friendly’ environment. This — basing on the analysis of the content — means both selected aspect of urban relationships (accessibility, public transportation, facilities), but also the quality (beauty and utility) of landscape architecture.

The aim of the study was to examine how the wording of a question about audio, visual and audiovisual stimuli can affect the assessment of the environment. The participants of the psychophysical experiments were asked to rate, on a numerical scale, audio and visual information both separately and together, combined into mixes. A set of questions was used for all the investigated audio, visual, and audio-visual stimuli. The participants were asked about the comfort or the discomfort caused by the perceived stimuli presented at three different sound levels.
The results show that there are no statistically significant differences between the assessment of comfort and discomfort associated with visual samples. Actually, the comfort and discomfort ratings are equivalent to the extent that a discomfort rating can be represented as the opposite to the comfort rating, i.e. the discomfort rating is equal to the 10 minus comfort rating.
In general, the results obtained for audio and audio-visual samples were the same, with only a few exceptions that were dependent on sound level. No statistically significant differences were found for the loudest stimuli, but there were some exceptions for the softener cases. Based on the results, we show that only for visual stimuli both scales are totally interchangeable. When presenting audio and audio-visual samples, only one scale should be applied – either discomfort or comfort, depending on the context and the character of the stimuli.