I visited a house recently which had been built in the early 1980s and the owner happened to have the original sales brochure. It doesn’t seem that long ago but looking at the pictures of the showhouse, which boasted such features as coloured bathroom suites, it is like something from a much simpler time.
It made me realise how much our homes have changed in a relatively short time. This was a large four-bedroom house intended for a family but it had a very basic kitchen with just enough space for a small table – very much a functional space and nothing like the inviting sociable spaces we live in today. There was no utility room and there was a separate dining room next to the kitchen.
As an architect, I’m fascinated with how we use our homes and how this has changed over time. And as a designer, I am obsessed with how our homes will evolve.
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The kitchen started out as a central, open hearth in the one-room medieval dwelling. The hearthstone, a flat rock, provided the base for a fire over which hung an iron pot for cooking. The hearth provided all of the essentials for life, heat, light and food.
In the time of Henry VIII, the kitchen fell from grace. Regarded as a noisy, foul-smelling and dangerous place, those that could afford to housed their kitchens in buildings separate from the house. Servants would travel long distances to serve the food.
In Victorian times running a kitchen was hard graft. Work would start at 5am on preparing the stove for the day. Okay, the maid would have done this but thankfully things have moved on.
The dining room was probably the first victim of modern living. The revolution in cooking and food in recent years has meant that cooking has become a much more sociable experience. I was a judge recently for the Irish Kitchen Awards and the buzz words were formal and informal dining – formal meant sitting at the table in the open-plan space and informal dining meant sitting at an island unit.
The 1980s kitchen had a back door which opened onto the garden, again a functional door rather than a fully glazed design feature. Opening the kitchen onto the garden is something that so many of our clients look for now – this coupled with an increased interest in grow-your-own might lead to an even greater synergy between indoor and outdoor spaces in the future.
Today however, the kitchen is definitely back in vogue. We are knocking down walls to open dining and living rooms onto the kitchen, re-establishing it once again as the centre of the home.
But what does the future have in store for the kitchen?
Our modern desire for open-plan living means that each year kitchen units are beginning to look more like built-in furniture in an attempt to blend seamlessly into living spaces. With apartment living on the rise, space is at a premium so this kind of sleek design is crucial.
Denise O’Connor is an architect and design consultant
