A Study on User Responses to Their Residential Interiors

The thesis is primarily concerned with human behaviour and interior environment through various aspects of personal responses to residential interiors both at physical and psychological level. The study is composed from key components of human behaviour and perception theory to gain insight on user responses to interior environments. Initial part of the thesis attributes to the process of perception theory by investigating the resources from environmental psychology with the intention of exemplifying the influences of surrounding environment on human responses through their physical and psychological needs. The existing literature comprised in installations from not only environmental design issues but also architectural developments through centring the attention essentially on the emotional comfort issues such as privacy, territoriality and personalization in addition to the functional efficiency issues for better residential places all the way through the facts on concerns to turn out a house to be a 'home' environment for its users. The following part of the thesis relays on the survey of housing projects which are built in the recent years by selection of user profiles that worked with an architect and interior designer on their residential spaces. Centring on both an exceptional user group that who are householders with high income families living in North Cyprus and worked with special designers, provided an opportunity to achieve an understanding on interaction between user and the designed environments related to their perception and individual characteristics. The key intention of the study was to establish common features of user group's on preferences, as well as investigating the role that their interior designer played in their surrounding environment. As a pilot study, ten different surveys were accomplished between different user groups. The findings of the study suggest in a wide range of discussions, by assessing user perceptions concerning the impact of residential interior designs played in achieving a sense of self in personal spaces of users. Keywords: Residential interiors, user response, interior design, human behaviour.