The Human Touch in Kitchen Technology: How Technology Changes Our Relationship with Food in the Rational and Ritual Kitchen

Abstract

The kitchen is the visible cultural manifestation of the technology human beings employ to store, prepare and eat food. Those who look at the history of kitchens will see two approaches for kitchen design that have determined the influence of technology on our relationship with storing, preparing and consuming food in the private households: the technological-rational kitchen and the social-ritual kitchen. The technological-rational kitchen had both a commercial and a social objective: it functions as a commercial testing ground for the latest technologies and materials, but it had its origins in the disappearance of domestic servants. The rational kitchen is first and foremost a commercial, technological vision of the future that affirms prevailing social conventions. Some architects, designers and artists have reflected critically on the overly tech-driven design approaches and come up with alternatives more attuned to the ritualistic relationship between human beings and food. Despite the promise of physical convenience and time saving, the rational kitchen deprives people of the pleasure and knowledge of cooking. For most daily users, the kitchen is not an optimal cooking workspace from which human beings are banned, but a social, ritualistic meeting place.