Report Suggests the Future of Kitchens Is Extinction

A new report from Swiss investment bank UBS asks, “Is the Kitchen Dead?," positing that with the rise of food delivery apps, "home cooking could fade away."

The latest in home design trends effectively offer two kitchens -- the clean, upscale open plan for entertaining or "event cooking," and then a second, smaller room for food prep. Columnist and brand strategist Arwa Mahdawi explains, "While the kitchen used to be the heart of the home, it’s becoming more like an appendix.” The UBS report adds that the industrialization of sewing and clothes manufacturing provides a useful analogy to today's disappearing kitchen, "Industrialisation increased production capacity, and costs fell. Supply chains were established and mass consumption followed. Some of the same characteristics are at play here: we could be at the first stage of industrialising meal production and delivery," TreeHugger.com reports.

When Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky designed what became known as the Frankfurt Kitchen 90 years ago, it had a strong social agenda; according to Paul Overy, the kitchen “was to be used quickly and efficiently to prepare meals and wash up, after which the housewife would be free to return to … her own social, occupational or leisure pursuits." Arwa Mahdawi talks to an architect who thinks getting rid of kitchens carries this a step further; like buying clothes instead of making them, ordering in our meals “pushes us to “[outsource] domestic work, with jobs where people receive compensation”.

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