The Kitchen

By Tiffany Cheung

Heavily influenced by a collection of trends and styles over a single short century, the design of our kitchens is a resulting concoction between industrial engineering and society’s ever-changing structure. Looking at the different tastes we have had over the years, we can see how the material, form and colour of the kitchen has embodied the characteristics of each era.

Pondering back to the pre-world war years, when the arts and crafts era detailed the workmanship of hand-crafted decor, the kitchen was a large space occupied with free standing cupboards around the perimeter and a large work table in the middle of the room. This mapped an orientation that faced inwards and allowed tasks to be carried out centrally, allowing a number of people, the female members of the household, to work together efficiently.

In the post-war years that followed, smaller dwellings that replaced ruins led to limited spaces available for the kitchen. The result of this was the design of space-saving built-in cabinets with fitted worktops, which removed the need of a central work table. The 1930s kitchen focused on a simple and functional layout in a period when food rationing carried on and meals were bland and under-portioned. The women, having tested their capabilities during the war, returned to being trapped alone in long hours of household chores.

Moving from mid-century onwards, technological advances began to pick up the pace. In the new age of appliances, kitchens were fitted out with new chrome textures, chequered flooring, and vibrant colours of plastic red or avocado green. The form of the kitchen was now more welcoming and exciting than ever before and along with the invention of convenience food, life for the modern housewife was dramatically transformed. Women were finally able to find a job and earn their own income as a result of less time spent preparing food.

Looking past the millennium, the kitchen of today not only satisfies a hungry stomach but also is the place where work is done, friends hang out, and families come together. The current kitchen experience we have created is arguably an amalgamation of all the different designs we have encountered throughout history. As the research behind the psychological interdependence between a person and his or her environment and behaviour comes into understanding, the results can influence how we achieve a balance between form and functionality in design. Subtly, the senses evoked from the different kitchen styles may have influenced the psychology of women and indirectly affected how society has developed.