Dwelling
Kitchen and hearth
housing school dining hall rural community restaurant
The place in the house where food is prepared around a heat source, from the open fire to the electric stove.
What it solves
It brings the family together and concentrates heat, smoke and steam. In the tropics they should be removed quickly with high cross ventilation.
Today
Cook with clean energy or with improved stoves that send all the smoke out through a chimney. Give the kitchen a high window or lattice, a work surface at a comfortable height and a place to work seated.
Common mistake
Enclosing a wood stove in a room with no smoke outlet, which harms the health of the person cooking.
Tomorrow
An electric stove powered by solar panels eliminates smoke inside the house. Height-adjustable work surfaces serve children, older people and wheelchair users.
Fact About 2.1 billion people in the world cook over open fires or with inefficient stoves, according to the World Health Organization.
Where it comes from
- 1Maya Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, living tradition
The three-stone hearth (k'óoben) is the heart of a kitchen that is usually in a separate building at the back of the house. - 2Ancient Greece and Rome Mediterranean, Antiquity
The hearth had its own goddesses, Hestia and Vesta. Its fire represented the family. - 3Pre-industrial European house Europe, before industrialization
The hearth moves from the center of the room, with a smoke hole in the roof, to the side with a chimney. - 4Traditional Japanese house Japan, of diffuse origin
The irori, a hearth sunk into the floor, cooked, heated and with its smoke protected beams and thatched roof from insects and damp.
Masters
- Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Frankfurt Kitchen, Frankfurt, Germany, 1926
She designs a small kitchen where each piece is placed in relation to the others to avoid unnecessary steps and effort. It is the origin of the compact, functional modern kitchen.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Dwelling
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.