HEALTHY LIVING IN THE CITY: QUESTIONING NATURE-INTERIOR RELATIONS IN HOUSING

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the role of interior design on constituting the relation between the housing interiors and healthy urban living/healthy life styles within densely populated metropolises. Today, over 50 percent of humanity are living in big and crowded cities. The relationship between humans, place and time have been redefining with the use of technology in every part of the daily lives. Most of the people live in small and isolated apartments within metropolises and become more distant from their natural qualities everyday. The paper discusses and questions the possibilities of reconnecting city dwellers with natural qualities and production in their lives. Different nutrition movements and alternative lifestyles, urban agriculture and urban permaculture practices, and some inititives around the world are discussed. In this context, experiences of a semester in 2018 at Istanbul Technical University, in scope of the interior design studio are presented. The studio discusses the issue by generating interior design ideas and searching for different ways of living which are connected to natural living, productivity and healthy living within the city of Istanbul, a metropolis which has more than 15 million population today.

Keywords: Interior design, healthy living, urban permaculture, urban lifestyles, housing interiors.