Questing Role of Landscaping on the Visual Quality of Public Indoor Spaces Based on the User Reactions: Case of Restaurants

Nature is a crucial part of human life. Indoor landscaping is getting more important in today's conditions. Nature integration into the indoor spaces provides various benefits for the interior spaces and the users. In addition to psychological benefits that improve human mood, increase productivity, and give positive emotions to the users, it contributes to the ecological, physical/visual quality of spaces. Therefore, opinions of the users on indoor landscaping are essential. The majority of people spend most of their time indoors, such as homes, offices, and restaurants. This situation causing them to live far from the natural world. Hence, getting away from nature creates the need to integrate nature into the interior spaces. Restaurants are among the most preferred public indoors. Conducting a research on user opinions/reactions on interior landscaping in restaurant spaces, and a literature review on this subject will contribute to this field. It has been identified that the indoor landscaping issue is not given enough significance and a limited number of indoor landscape solutions are preferred for nature integration into spaces at today's restaurant indoors. Thus, this thesis primarily aims to explore, the integration of nature into the selected restaurants that were preferred by various users by conducting a qualitative methodology. And the other aim of this study is to provide landscape integration suggestions that would assist interior designers while integrating natural elements into public interiors, based on the opinions/reactions of different users. The findings of this research were obtained based on the results of the investigations/analysis of selected cases (restaurants) and the detection of user comments/reactions from several digital platforms. Accordingly, various spatial articulation of landscape elements has been detected as well as appreaciative reactions of users upon existing solutions besides positive reactions towards alternate spatial articulations, use of natural materials and use of landscaping elements within the interior space. Keywords: Indoor Landscaping, User Reactions, Nature in the Space, Restaurant