Australia is having a world first with a programme for creating kitchens – with veggie gardens - for 191 primary schools with the goal of teaching kids how to cook. The adults are teachers (a few of whom are experts), but chefs are nowhere to be seen. The kids grow the food, choose the menu and serve the meals in imagined restaurants from ethnic cuisines or what inspires them.

Whilst on holiday in Australia last month, I visited the Stephanie Alexander Foundation to see a school kitchen in action. One of the most inspiring developments is that the teachers and kids are using food as a key source of inspiration throughout the curriculum. Need a history lesson? Then what about using a fruit, say an aubergine, or something like pasta and tracking down its story?

I have been helping Lucy Turner, my sister-in-law, create a pioneering kitchen design for Berrima school in NSW. She is applying for a grant to the foundation. We will keep you posted about how it goes. The foundation has received AU$ 12 million to partly fund the programme. Parents and school have to find 50% of the financing, so it becomes a real community effort. Mums and dads are called on to provide practical assistance. I will providing design services free for the first school. Johnny Grey Studios will be examining the difference between a home kitchen and one for kids in large groups. Stay tuned.

John Naish’s article, “What makes a house a home?” in the October issue of Psychologies Magazine begins with the proclamation: ‘You and I are never going to get on’. He was referring to a grand Victorian trophy house that he bought to fulfil what turned out to be a misconceived fantasy.

Naish then swapped his Victorian nightmare for an odd shaped, ramshackle but loveable London terrace house. In so doing, he learnt that aspiration and comfort are very different creatures indeed. Comfort is complex, hard to achieve and at the very top of the list of human needs.

Naish seeks out research from social scientists and writers to find out what it is that makes a house a home. At the beginning, he quotes neuro-scientist John Zeisel: ‘our genetically developed instincts make us feel relaxed around flowers, hearth and water’. Edward Wilson, professor of comparative zoology at Harvard, expands upon this statement by explaining biophilia, which is our need for organic surroundings.

Studies by Frances Kuo at Illinois University also found that women residing in apartments are less depressed when they have views of nature, while novelist Douglas Coupland is quoted about de-narration and the damage caused by banishing all references to personal clutter.

Frank McAndrew, an environmental psychologist at Knox College, Illinois says we prefer rooms with nooks and we like to survey our spaces from a safe vantage point so we don’t feel exposed. Meanwhile, author and professor Clare Cooper Marcus from Berkeley in her book House as Mirror of Self advises us to ‘ask the house to talk’ if you feel lost in what to do.

The quest for psychologically and physically comfortable homes is what we at JG studios have been striving at for years. We have updated our concept of the unfitted kitchen with the sympathetic application of neuroscience in our spatial analysis. We get a mention at the end of John’s piece as purveyors of Sofa Geography. Pick up the latest issue of Psychologies to more to find out what that is!