Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

The modern kitchen as we know it today is an essential component of contemporary life. In the west, often open to both the living room and dining room, making for a natural gathering place when entertaining at home. But this has not always been the case, the kitchen of today has a long past. It has changed drastically since the Paleolithic period, and it is bound to keep changing as we adapt to the impositions that global warming and the climate crisis will have on its functionality. This evolution will produce much more than cosmetic changes. It will combine active and passive technologies to develop interdependent systemic connections that will transcend the perimeter of the physical kitchen to connect it at the micro and macro levels with the city around it. While there will be new materials and technologies, the main changes will be more functional, ethical, and philosophical. The kitchen of the future will need to become a participant in creating ecological solutions for a more sustainable world. It will become the center of a dwelling that gives back instead of always taking. And (as we learned from the pandemic) it will also need to become a social space for activities not related to cooking nor eating. While emerging technological changes will be important, the most important transformation will depend on changing the mentality of the user as the kitchen becomes the catalyst for a sustainable home. This paper will present the evolution of the kitchen, ideating a proposal for its next reiteration. A kitchen that will combine intuitive, responsive, and organic performance to simplify life, address issues of future urban density, home food production, multigenerational living and at the same time be good to the environment. The future of dwelling revolves around a sustainable, socially interactive, and self-sufficient kitchen.