Abstract
From observational approaches to housing in Kuwait, it has been found that the people there are experiencing a housing crisis, specifically in interior architecture, as they are building and living in houses that do not fulfil their needs. This is evidenced by the fact that in a single year, almost every house owner in both private and governmental houses in Kuwait city has done two or three alterations, either adding a room or bathroom, enlarging a living room, or adding walls for privacy.
For the above reasons, the aim of this study is to build a body of knowledge based on several theories, in order to enrich and improve the current Kuwaiti housing legislation with emphasis on interior architecture. By having access to authorized information, in theory Kuwaitis could improve their homes. This study therefore investigates theories such as Maslow's Motivation Theory that highlights the hierarchy of human needs, Adaptation theory to explore the cultural, social, and environmental adaptation processes humans experience within their houses, Space Syntax to provide a systematic approach to segregation and space integration within the house, and sustainability to provide guidelines for building houses that maintain the people's cultural values and house design traditions in a way that enriches their lives and well-being. In addition, this study focuses on planning and building legislation and the impact of neighbouring on the house design that in turn affects people's daily lives.
This study begins by giving the reader a brief history of Kuwait and its urban development, along with the influence that the discovery of oil had on people's houses and their house design. This is followed by two parts: the first is the deductive part, which explores the theories outlined above, while the second is the inductive part and describes the author's empirical work in which extended interviews with open -ended questions were used to acquire data regarding people's feelings, problems and needs within their houses. The findings and conclusions from that work are presented together with recommendations for future housing design. The research findings and the deductive part of this study are then considered together to produce a framework which legislators and designers in Kuwait Municipality and the PAHC (Public Authority for Housing Care) could use to improve the current Kuwaiti housing legislation comprehensively, with emphasis on the interior architecture. In the conclusion a review of the main findings of the thesis is presented, together with a set of fundamental recommendations derived from the synthesis of the deductive and inductive parts of this research. The thesis concludes with a final message about the importance of interior architecture in the quality of people's lives.
