Capitalist corruption is spreading to America's kitchens

I currently live with two roommates in a very small apartment with a kitchen in Ljubljana, Slovenia. By American standards, it's more like a kitchenette. It consists of a stainless steel sink and stove combo (with a small dishwasher on low speed underneath), an IKEA storage cart, the smallest refrigerator in existence, and an equally small oven underneath. there is. Even my old boyfriend's 500-square-foot studio in Washington, D.C., which was set up with miniature versions of most household appliances, felt larger than this. Every time I come to Europe, I get a culture shock when I first see the tiny kitchen in the apartment. Of course, there are luxurious exceptions for wealthy people, but in most cases the kitchen is not the most important room. In the United States, it's hard to escape the feeling that the kitchen is a status symbol that determines the quality of one's home and social life.

But even though the kitchen is the most important part of American homes, the American kitchen is facing an identity crisis. Anyone who has seen her post-Farmhouse era on HGTV will understand that. Most of the kitchens on display are derived from an earlier style, which for a decade was limited to white and greige, and now features a less rustic and broader color palette. For architecture critics, one of the best ways to gauge the state of luxury residential construction (which tends to determine the trends followed by mainstream manufacturers) is to judge competitions. I did that in the “Best of 2023” issue.of baltimore magazine. It became clear that no one was sure what the zeitgeist was in the kitchen. Some kitchens went for a minimalist, masculine “architectural” look, while others preferred a more mass-market look, like sensible cabinetry with brass hardware. Some are clinging to the all-gray farmhouse mode that has clearly come to an end. Looking at the entries felt like scrolling through Pinterest. No uniform trend was observed. Why not?

fascinating article on curved Real estate reporter Kim Belsey has a partial answer. She asked several architects and brokers why so many new luxury kitchens designed by architects are being dismantled by ultra-wealthy clients. High-end designers increasingly believe that the time it takes for bespoke architecture to be replicated in the mass market is being significantly reduced. , the rate at which styles are considered obsolete rapidly accelerates.

It's easy to be quick to blame the Internet (or its overuse during the pandemic) for the rapid contraction of the taste cycle. Industry tastemakers have been complaining for some time that the proliferation of images on the Internet makes everyone think they're a design expert. But since most social media sites have been around for more than a decade, why is there so much confusion about kitchens now? Velcy has a better theory. I spoke to him. It's not Instagram that has designers rushing for new things more than ever. Marketplaces like Temu allow you to quickly manufacture customized exhibit knock-offs. I would also like to add that not only does counterfeiting make a design unoriginal, but once a design is posted on Temu and his AliExpress, there is nothing a designer can do to remove it from the website. Almost none. Best to move on. This has become a vicious circle for interior designers and industrial designers, where speeding up has a negative impact on everyone and everything, especially the environment.

Still, condemning the new website obscures the core issue of an unsustainable cultural ecosystem that values ​​homes as status symbols and investments rather than as places to live and live. Media and cultural production are irrevocably linked, and continuous innovation is prioritized over long-term resilience and design. The fight against counterfeits, whether it be at the local language level, connections to reality shows and the home improvement industry, or high-end. But what gets lost in all this is what a kitchen is or what it does. Kitchens in upper-class homes were once closed off from view from the rest of the home and staffed by servants (not to mention fire safety reasons), so historically the kitchen was It was the last room open to other residents. Houses occurred on a large scale around the 1970s. Since then, kitchens, which were originally thought to have walls, have become increasingly shapeless and less and less efficient for cooking. Many new suburban kitchens require regular moving over 300 square feet. My small kitchen in Ljubljana more closely aligns with the labor premise behind the enclosed kitchen layouts that were once the norm before open floor plans became popular. Kitchen design is always a matter of labor, and historically women's labor, whether that means keeping it out of sight or allocating it most efficiently. The latter was most famously demonstrated in his Frankfurt kitchen, one of the first ever equipped kitchens, designed by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte his Lihotsky in 1926. This kitchen aimed to reduce the number of steps required when cooking. One of the earliest “social architects,” Schütte-Lihotsky, whose practice is dedicated above all to the public good, has a clear social and feminist focus on alleviating the burden of household chores through his designs. It was considered a serious problem.

But today we seem to be doing the opposite of what Schütte-Lihotsky envisioned. In the United States, the kitchen has become a more visible place of consumption than ever before. Whether it was mass-produced goods displayed on wide countertops in the 1950s or the blown-out Emeril-inspired TV kitchens of the '80s, spectacle trumped what the kitchen actually was: a place of work and sustenance. My European kitchen may drive me crazy with its small and slow appliances, but it's nice to not have to take so many steps when making a meal. It also makes me think more about how I consume food, how much I buy at once, and whether I have room in my fridge for leftover Chinese food when I could just make a little something for myself. became. The kitchen is perhaps the best example of how a home's architecture shapes behavior. With gray cabinetry, rich people with $75,000 to spend on Gattorino may no longer need to cook in their grand kitchens. This fact should make us think twice about our desire to emulate their design choices. Perhaps we should spend less time pondering countertops and finishes and instead ask ourselves what even the most modest architecture does or should do for us. maybe.