Transforming the Food Axis: Houses, Tools, Modes of Analysis

Abstract

The open-plan house has usually been explained as the result of architects' modernist aesthetic aims. In the early twentieth century these flowing spaces that housed reception and social functions excluded the kitchen. However, in both popular and architect-designed houses after World Warn, a kitchen was often opened up to the other social spaces in the house. What caused this shift along the food axis (food preparation, storage, and service spaces) from closed and service-oriented to open and sociable? The changing role of women and a changing household economy explains the spatial redefinition of the kitchen, and suggests some new methods for the analysis of domestic space. Resume L'avenement de la maison a aires ouvertes est habituellement percu comme l'aboutissement des visees esthetiques des architectes contem-porains. Au debut du XXe siecle, les vastes espaces qui repondaient aux fonctions sociales et aux receptions excluaient la cuisine. Neanmoins, dans les habitations populaires et les demeures dessinees par les architectes apres la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la cuisine s'est souvent ouverte aux autres espaces sociaux. A quoi doit-on ce deplacement de l'axe de l'alimentation (preparation de la nourriture, entreposage et aires de service), c'est-a-dire des espaces clos, purement fonctionnels, vers des aires ouvertes, conviviales? Le role nouveau des femmes et l'evolution de l'economie menagere expliquent la redefinition spatiale de la cuisine et suggerent quelques methodes inedites pour l'analyse de l'espace domestique.

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