If you take away the dominance of food, what comes next? If cooking was the purpose of the 19th and early 20th century kitchen, what activities will take us into this century’s kitchen space?

As back rooms that were places of work for women, where the unremitting daily tasks of caring and providing were carried out, kitchens were not places of fun or leisure, but were rather more of duty and purpose. As household tasks are now increasingly shared between both genders, the contemporary kitchen has become a place where we can mix our domestic activities with enjoyable ones such as chatting, snacking or reading the newspaper.

In these happier kitchen times, our spaces are tailored to suit our instinctive needs – space, light, communication and nature. The kitchen is now a liberated space. So what’s next? What behaviours will influence how kitchen designers create  the kitchen of the future? To predict or anticipate this we need to look at how we live in and utilise the whole house.

Rooms have broken down their ‘use’ barriers, essentially become more multipurpose and open plan. Their conventional labels don’t necessarily apply anymore. Technology (and I say this with care because I have always been a bit of a sceptic regarding claims that it changes us as people) is playing a big role.

The proliferation of iPods, 3G phones and laptops democratically spreads the use of technology to allow it everywhere in the house. Every room can now be a media room, work room, game room or reading room, although not a kitchen! The cellular structure of the house is disintegrating and the kitchen is not just not exempt, but at the forefront.

Over the last few decades, the kitchen has been the most active room in the house in terms of evolutionary use. Dining rooms fell under the remit of the kitchen twenty years ago, being relocated to the front of the house. The various functions of the living room have also accrued over a similar time frame and now hallways, gardens and multimedia are in the orbit of the kitchen.

Five socio-economic forces that might account for these changes include: shortage of time because both men and women work: women’s liberation (if you are in doubt of this look at kitchens in Asia or the Middle East); open plan living with its addiction to light space; less formal social attitudes and behaviours; the widespread adoption of central heating; and changed attitudes about food and cooking.

Stay tuned for more on the evolution of the post-culinary kitchen.

During a recent trip to Shanghai, walking through an open site of a high rise development, I was both confronted and confounded by a client’s question regarding the ‘modern’ plan layout. The client could simply not comprehend why anyone would want their kitchen visible to the rest of the living spaces, let alone naked to the eyes of discerning guests. Why showcase the grime, grease and toil? Of course, the environment for consuming food was of critical importance, but the ghastly preparation needed to be concealed at all cost. Such was the Chinese way.

Though whispers of societal change are certainly afoot, I do sense that the open kitchen ideal still remains an enigma in much of the East. The kitchen has always embodied nourishment and prosperity in both the physical and mythical, yet it was all but considered a functional composition within the home. Aesthetics were never set on this particular agenda, it was perhaps more profound than that. History reiterates this notion across the East, where shrines were typically mounted above stoves, a nod to the polytheistic paths that gave a single deity control over the enclosed hearth of the kitchen, the soul of the home.

Indeed, many subscribe to the class system perspective where servants were, and still are, part of the social make-up of the cooking process. Yet this does not address the fact that the lower classes had their cooking zones located in their courtyards, sub-buildings and entry halls.  So what has changed?  As with the West, the modern kitchen of the East is a more cleansed environment, freed from the olfactory oppression of yesteryear.  Refrigeration, running water and ventilation have inevitably brought the kitchen alongside the living room.  There lies now but a single, dividing, illusionary wall.

Technological advances aside, we must also remember that the perception of the Western kitchen changed forever when we were reminded that cooking was both a highly creative and social act, not merely a means to an end. This revolutionary understanding was adapted to all walks of life, not only confined to the whims of the upper classes. Ultimately, the integration of the kitchen into the living room represented a massive pivotal shift. It was and is inextricably linked to the social, innate binding of a family fabric that lies outside of the ethos of workplace.

So is the expanding middle class mindset of the East now perched at this tipping point? Or has the glossy photo spread of a Western lifestyle been thrust upon all as we all grapple with globalization? Perhaps this whole narrative has nothing to do with orientation, but in actuality, a natural evolution of the kitchen and its destined relationship to the family core. Indeed, as the formality of the dining room withered away in the West many years ago, perhaps it is now time for the cloaked kitchen of the East to be celebrated and reclaim its rightful open place in the center of the home.

Cast iron casserole with wooden handle first made by Iitala in 1960. Once celebrated on a Finnish postage stamp. Combining design usability with a traditional cast iron pot, Timo Sarpaneva’s inspiration came from his blacksmith grandfather. Image from Iitala.

The recession is closing in on minimalism. Sleek, cool, mono-aesthetics for people who don’t want to actually live in their homes is so last year. Goodbye as well to souless power kitchens where any signs of life are verboten. There are no remnants of actual cooking, with everything cleared up before you can say, “We’ve had a great dinner.”

Minimalism costs a lot. Less is meant to be much, much more and the punters want you to know it, the reverse of what you would hope. Hidden hinges, skirting boards, massive wall to ceiling cupboards, wide floor boards, frameless doors and windows do not come cheaply. It’s a statement of control and the power to impress. I must admit that one wants order if the chaos and clutter become too invasive, but it only takes a single glance at a Russian Oligarch style banker penthouse apartment and I quickly want my clutter back. These swanky pads are destined for people who don’t want homes but swanky hotel rooms, fully owned but barely lived in. If these minimalist interiors were once our aspirational home models, they are no longer.

All of this is not an attack on modernism, but merely a realisation that its true heart lies in a more accommodating and instinctual approach. When you visit Charles and Ray Eames’ Case Study house in the Palisades, you get a full taste of how they lived with found objects adorning walls and tables, a huge low level trolley on which sits a portable jungle – moved around the room according to mood. You can feel how much they loved living there.  Minimalism is grand standing for interior designers and frustrated architects who made an alliance with overly rich domestic control freaks. Letting designers impose a strong style statement is only justifiable if it makes people feel comfortable. In these troubled economic times, I suspect we are going to loose our interest in high status interiors and go for simpler, instinctual designs that cater to basics, such as functional well-made furniture, creating the right ambience with access to outdoors, sunlight, natural materials, and things handmade to last.  IKEA stuff that looks great but quickly deteriorates seems wasteful and unecological.  We will learn to accept that things will wear, and should be worthy of repair.  There will still be room for pattern and decoration and texture, but it will be chosen more for provenance and mood and less for fashion.

What could come out of this financial crisis that would be good is support for artisans in all aspects of home renovation, with a concomitant desire for authenticity and less bling, more confident personal expression, the use of found objects, expanding the use of junk shops and repairing things. Careful choice exercised whilst purchasing things will be allied to the end of anti-mess behaviour at home and the minimalist lifestyle.