Civil Engineering and Architecture Vol. 10(2), pp. 669 - 681
DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.100222
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The Role of Apartments Interior Design on Individual Privacy: Residential Buildings in Erbil as a Case Study

Alan M. Qaradaxi ¹, Hafedh A. Yahya ^1,2,*
1 College of Engineering, Tishk International University, Iraq
² College of Engineering, University of Mosul, Iraq

ABSTRACT

Privacy refers to the control of how much information about an individual should be allowed into the public domain. Individual privacy in an apartment building refers to the blockage of information within an individual room within the family apartment. Previous studies have given less attention on the privacy of residential apartments which this study focuses on. This research paper aims to explore the role of interior design in providing individual privacy in residential buildings. With time, more demand for apartment buildings is experienced and people are preferring more private places as physical connections become rare. As such, the question of how to maintain individual privacy with the population increase and reduced need for physical connections prompted the study. To assess the interior design privacy of the apartments, an observational case study was applied. Eight residential buildings in Erbil formed the research sample and they were assessed using a Likert scale to obtain average values of each variable. The findings show that interior design elements tend to influence visual and acoustical privacy to a great extent. The choice of the interior design materials has an impact on the overall rating of building on protecting both acoustical and visual privacy. Results show no correlation between visual and acoustical privacy for the individual for the same project. The interior design of Shahan city apartment presents the worst regarding to individual privacy. The study concludes that in order to increase the value of housing unit, it should maintain the individual privacy within the limitations of the societies. It is recommended that privacy achieved by controlling architectural elements of interior design of the apartment should raise its value. It is also recommended that the local and national governments strengthen policies regulating interior designs norms to reduce the lack of individual privacy.

KEYWORDS
Apartments, Visual Privacy, Acoustical Privacy Individual Privacy, Interior Design

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Alan M. Qaradaxi , Hafedh A. Yahya , "The Role of Apartments Interior Design on Individual Privacy: Residential Buildings in Erbil as a Case Study," Civil Engineering and Architecture, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 669 - 681, 2022. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.100222.

(b). APA Format:
Alan M. Qaradaxi , Hafedh A. Yahya (2022). The Role of Apartments Interior Design on Individual Privacy: Residential Buildings in Erbil as a Case Study. Civil Engineering and Architecture, 10(2), 669 - 681. DOI: 10.13189/cea.2022.100222.