ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Sustainable Infrastructure
Scalable Hexagonal Modular Units for Green and Adaptive Infrastructure
Provisionally accepted
- Technical University of Košice, Košice, Slovakia
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
University campuses in Central Europe, like elsewhere, are under increasing pressure to adopt flexible, climate-responsive, and ecological infrastructure that improves both environmental performance and student experience. In this study, we introduce a hexagonal modular unit (HEXA unit) designed to revitalize underused campus spaces through green infrastructure. We combined a survey of 190 campus users, statistical tests for reliability and associations, and a Life Cycle Assessment. The survey revealed that students strongly prefer natural materials like wood and vegetation and favor multifunctional module configurations that enhance social interaction and collaborative learning. Reliability (Cronbach's Alpha) supported consistency in our attitudinal measures; Chi-square tests revealed significant differences in material preferences. Our LCA shows that HEXA units built with natural materials can reduce carbon footprint by up to ~30% compared to traditional synthetic designs. Beyond environmental gains, the findings suggest that modular design choices can also enhance student engagement and support more resilient campus ecosystems. Overall, HEXA represents a scalable model for green infrastructure that can be adapted by universities and potentially extended to other urban contexts in support of sustainability goals.
Keywords: Biophilic materials, Campus urban design, Hexagonal design units, Life Cycle Assessment, Modular green infrastructure, Sustainable cities, User preferences
Received: 16 Sep 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kozlovska, Halaszova, Kaposztasova, Vranayová and Kocúrkova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daniela Kaposztasova
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.