A space for conviviality, a technical space, a space for comfort and nourishment, a space for processing and manufacturing, a space for energy, a space for pleasure, a place where the animal and plant worlds (food) enter the home, a space once reserved for women: the kitchen is the mirror of our societies.
Like architecture, the kitchen is at once a space (a room), a use (the meal), a time (a ritual), but also a vital need (where sustenance is provided) and a cultural fact (gastronomy, a vernacular and exploratory discipline – local and global – between traditional cuisine and nouvelle cuisine).
It is also:
the primary reason for sedentary living (Abel and Cain)
a link to the land (breeding and agriculture)
a place where animals and plants enter the home
a place for storage
a place where matter is assembled, transformed and destroyed
a place where food is prepared before being destroyed.
a historically gendered space
a place of pleasure (good food)
a place of conviviality (friends: those with whom we share bread)
a place for health (eating a balanced diet)
a technical space (water supply, cooking, ventilation, etc.)
For all these reasons, the kitchen interests us in that it questions the very essence of architecture, and more particularly that of the home.
The laboratory speculates on the kitchen’s ability to stimulate a more virtuous way of living in the world today, on every scale.
