Where has the kitchen gone?
May 5th, 2010
UPDATE: 22/9/11 Now this from the RIBA and their excellent Case for Space publication
8 sqm is the single bedroom you’re missing. It’s the space for a new arrival to the family, the space that means the kids have a room of their own or a spare room for a guest to stay over. It’s the space that could take the kitchen out of the lounge and the sounds and smells that go with it.
Building Design magazine ran a story recently about a new development in Roehampton (South West London) by Assael architects for some flats. I phoned Wandsworth council to try and find out more and this is what I discovered.
https://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/gis/search/Search.aspx
Type in the planning reference 2009/4199
Land at Highcliffe Drive, Clarence Lane SW15
No single aspect flats that I could see from a cursory glance but no kitchens either. The kitchen seems to be a vanishing room in modern developments and in this development appears only as a corner unit in the living rooms. No view from the sink, no isolation of smells from the living room. Too bad if you’re boiling cabbage or cooking curry.
I’d like to say that I don’t understand why modern developments have done away with separate kitchens but the sadness is that I do understand and I don’t like it. If you look back at the history of housing from year dot through to the present there was no doubt a time when families shared a kitchen as in tenement blocks, or all lived in one room where the range provided the warmth, and variations on that theme.