## 1 Introduction  
In general, the external environment around residential buildings is perceived by several modalities, including sight, sound, and touch [1]. In general, residents of residential areas consider anthropogenic noise to be the most disturbing emission limiting the quality of the environment [2; 3; 4; 5; 6]. The ongoing spread of urban areas, highways, and airports throughout the world makes anthropogenic noise almost omnipresent [2]. Traffic noise is perceived by the public as one of the most disturbing types of anthropogenic noise, and its negative effects on public health, including annoyance, a reduction in mental health, hypertension, and an increased risk of myocardial infarction, have been demonstrated by many authors [3; 4; 5; 6; 7]. In EU countries, the issue of noise has become a professional and political topic in the past two decades. In recent years, several European research projects have addressed the issue of road traffic noise, including SILVIA (Sustainable Road Surfaces for Traffic Noise Control), INQUEST (Information Network Quiet European Road Surface Technology), and SPENS (Sustainable Pavements for European New Member States) [8; 9; 10; 11]. In the aforementioned projects, the main focuses were the measurement of the influence of road surfaces on traffic noise and the effect of low-noise pavements [12; 13; 14; 15]. Optimizing the surface texture at the macro scale was found to be important for reducing tire/road noise. Regarding pavement types, porous asphalt concrete and its variants have the most reliable low-noise properties while also having some drawbacks in terms of durability and maintenance [13]. The noise level at thin-surface layers tends to be 3 dB lower for cars and 1 dB lower for heavy vehicles than for average asphalt concrete/stone mastic asphalt. Porous pavements yield average noise reductions in the order of 3-4 dB. The potential noise reduction, as reflected by the lowest noise level measured for a family of pavements is in the order of 5-10 dB for thin-layer surfaces and porous asphalt [14]. After 3 years of service, the sound level (\(L_{Amax}\)) of the low-noise surfaces of very thin asphalt concrete and porous asphalt concrete was shown to increase by 5.7 to 6.5 dB to a level similar to that of standard asphalt concrete [15]. Based on a literature review, the authors feel that the contextual design (CD) of new, or the rehabilitation of existing, urban crossroads (UC) is not used enough to minimize the noise load of the surroundings. Contextual design (CD) is a user-centered design process that was developed by [PERSON] and [PERSON]. It is a step-by-step process in which field data is collected and used to design any sort of product that includes a technical component [16; 17]. CD has primarily been used for the design of computer information systems, including hardware and software. Parts of contextual design have been adapted for use as a usability evaluation method and for contextual application design [18; 19]. The use of CD has been increasingly promoted in the fields of urban planning, architecture [20; 21; 22], and civil engineering [23; 24]. This paper uses Slovak conditions to present a new approach to the design of UC, which integrates acoustic, psychoacoustic, architectural, environmental, and economic aspects, providing a holistic approach [25; 26; 27] to the design of these engineering structures (CD of UC), similar to what has been used in the crossroads contextual design for Polish [28; 29; 30; 31] and Czech [32] conditions, as well as by other authors [33; 34; 35; 36; 37; 38]. The authors of a previous study [27] presented the holistic approach as a sustainable way to prepare, construct, and manage integrated transport infrastructure with a particular focus on pavement in the middle Europe area. The situation in areas exceeding traffic noise limits in Slovakia is very similar to that in Poland. In another article [30], it is stated that, in Poland, the acceptable value according to the law for the night-time sub-interval is exceeded by about 11 dB.