INDOOR SPACE QUALITY: A FEEDBACK ON THE PROSPECTS OF RESIDENTIAL DESIGN PRODUCT

Abstract

Studies in the past few decades consistently reports that housing products are not satisfactory to the end users need. Majority of the conclusions are greatly influenced by the condition of the indoor space quality of the housing product. This indoor space quality, in this context, is a measure of compliance of the indoor space to the users’ lifestyle. It is hypothesised that design process that marginalise users' lifestyle have higher tendency of not been satisfactory but little or no studies have been conducted to test this hypothesis. The residential indoor space was, therefore, holistically studied against users' lifestyles with the intention of averting recently observed indoor modification by users and promote design output that is lifestyle compliance. This research is a community-based household survey and uses questionnaire for data collection in the selected residential areas in Akure, Ondo State, Nigeria. The result shows that the indoor spaces in the studied areas does not comply with the lifestyle of the users, and this have resulted in incessant modification of the spaces. Furthermore, the modification has affected environmental benefits such as natural ventilation, lighting, and circulations within and around the spaces. The study, therefore, has helped to uncover the main cause of the increasing modification of residential indoor spaces by users and also proffer means of approach to better avert the anomalies and improve housing satisfaction.