9 ms·

Patina and Intimacy

170 points by simonsarris 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
The modern kitchen isn't "utilitarian", lots of it could be simpler and more functional. Cement slab flooring with epoxy coat is what you see in industrial kitchens (and mine!) because its tough to mar and easy to clean. This place has some fake wood "laminate". The cabinet doors are covered in frilly, unnecessary detail, bright work handles etc. The "center island" table this is a great idea but it should be an open frame table on casters. I don't know what you'd properly call this aesthetic, but its there and it has screwed over the design of the space at the cost of much utility.
- ip26 5y ago
  A kitchen is somewhere you live as well as work. Cement slab flooring is pretty uncomfortable to spend two hours working barefoot, especially in winter. It’s also worth acknowledging the existence of show kitchens, which really don’t care about utility at all, and considering them separately.
  - kijin 5y ago
    Nobody in an industrial kitchen is supposed to work barefoot. :) For homes, heated cement slabs are so much better than the regular stuff. Slabs embedded with hot water tubes have a fairly large heat capacity, so it stays warm all day and transfers heat directly into your feet and up through the rest of your body no matter where you're standing. A layer of soft organic material on top of the slab will make it more comfortable to stand on as well, as long as you choose something that's easy to clean.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    Ours works well 9 months of the year; its does suck in winter. in hot summertime barefoots on it works well :) "somewhere you live" is exactly the point. Our house has been a kennel as much as a house. Few people want that, we're just weird.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  You are describing extreme industrial utility. The blog author is describing pastoral whimsy. The modern American kitchen is probably about 2/3 of the way towards your version on a 1-d spectrum.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    > pastoral whimsy I think that's an ungenerous term for what was merely normal for thousands of years into the past. I'd argue we're still recovering from the brutalist ugliness of 1960s fashion and ideas -- the notion that despite our humble origins, man could transcend nature and do better than it. The widespread adoption of baby formula over breastfeeding is perhaps the saddest outworking of this notion, but it showed up everywhere else -- in brutalist architecture, cold metal furniture, metal Christmas trees, linoleum floors... Not that new synthetic materials are bad, but I would have hated to live through a time when natural beauty was at such a cultural ebb. I think we're still recovering from it, and we need more design leaders to help us remember natural beauty. Here are a couple of quotes from William Morris: "everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent." He also wrote, "Have nothing in your house you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      You're responding to something that isn't what I said. Look at the painting and then look at the photo of the staged corner in the authors kitchen. The big difference is that the painting of the real working kitchen depicted an actual working space, it was busy and active and full of stuff and kind of chaotic. The upper walls were probably greasy from cooking and it probably smelled like food and wood smoke. I more or less agree with the sentiment of the article, by the way. The sterile home aesthetic makes absolutely no sense to me and it's not something I want or live out in my own life. But the reality is that a cute kitchen display like in the photo is neither practical nor sustainable unless you spend a lot of your time cleaning. I use cabinets because I actually want my counter space and because when I leave stuff out on the counter it gets dirty and dusty. Patina doesn't bother me, but grime does. Therefore I called it "pastoral whimsy". People started using cabinets because they wanted them and could actually afford them, not because they were somehow indoctrinated into using them.
- giraffe_lady 5y ago
  Those open storage tables and shelves that commercial kitchens¹ have are usable there because they have the main dry storage outside of the kitchen space. You keep some essentials there that are used many times every day, and the rest is moved into the kitchen as part of the prep phase and cleared out at the end of service. In big kitchens this is enough of a task that it's a role on its own: porter. If you were to use those as your main ingredient and tool storage without clearing it every day it would be a mess both in terms of visual clutter and just flour and shit spilling out everywhere. Is that more minimal than putting cabinet doors over it? I don't know actually, maybe. Which indicates to me that "minimal" is a subjective judgement based on certain criteria, and there are multiple valid measures of kitchen minimalism. I grew up in and worked for decades in commercial kitchens and I am often saying this. Commercial kitchens have a different set of constraints than home kitchens, and commercial kitchen design adopted wholesale is not going to be more usable than a well-designed consumer kitchen. It's not more minimal per se either. That open storage demands a closet worth of plastic bins to keep ingredients in, for example. BTW commercial kitchens pretty much all have terra cotta tiles for some reason. Must just be a good combo of cheap, durable, reasonably non-slip (which coated concrete definitely is not). ¹: Not industrial kitchens that's a different thing.
rgovostes 5y ago
Previously from the same author, a philosophical two-part series on building his own home. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881363
- ARCarr 5y ago
  After reading the original post I was reminded of the article you shared and went to go check if it was the same guy. Definitely a good read!
- simonsarris 5y ago
  I'm in the middle of rewriting these, expanding them, and finishing the series now, for the substack.
talkingtab 5y ago
There are some places where I have stayed that have a magic to them. And yes, I say that even though I am a geek. An old farm B&B in Holland, old cabins in California. I have always wondered why I feel "different" in those places. This article has the answer. Of the two kitchens in the article, which would I want to be in? Which would make me feel at "home"? I learned something from this, thanks!
tomc1985 5y ago
Not exactly sure why this guy thinks that idolizing old art makes him the pinnacle of modern design. Oh, no! No shadows! The (lack of) humanity in it! He's just saying your kitchen should look like a Rembrandt painting, as if that aesthetic was truly better. (Hint: it isn't)
- mahogany 5y ago
  Just curious -- why be so dismissive and snarky? At the very least, it's an interesting discussion to have, and one you clearly have an opinion about. > Hint: it isn't For what it's worth, I think it is, but it's obviously subjective. The modern kitchen aesthetic looks alien, sterile, and uninviting in contrast to the Laquy painting, which looks lived in and homely. In short, the modern kitchen image makes me feel uneasy and the painting makes me feel calm.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    > In short, the modern kitchen image makes me feel uneasy and the painting makes me feel calm. Are you saying that because the article suggested it? Personally I think the spaciousness of the modern kitchen depicted is liberating and freeing. I have a cramped kitchen and it sucks.
    - mahogany 5y ago
      No, I explained why it makes me feel that way but I can expand. The modern kitchen image looks sterile, pristine, and I feel anxiety at the thought of dirtying it. I also think it looks alien and I can't imagine where the materials came from to construct it. I feel no connection to it as a "human place" and thus wouldn't want to live in it. Additionally, I think size is related to aesthetic but it's an independent topic. You can have a small but "modern aesthetic" kitchen. I agree, a cramped kitchen sucks!
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Because I find regressive calls for a past aesthetic tiresome, predictable, and cliched. We do not live in the past, we live in the present. Nostalgia is fun but a highly overrated feeling, and the paintings he references are idealized depictions of life at that time. Not to mention how WASPy and Western-centric it is, I'm sure someone from Asia, Africa, or even some latin state, might feel very different.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
This was a lovely piece of observational writing. I think that the "easy to clean" part of the list of descriptors here is among the most important. Among many other things, two of the things that have changed in the last couple of hundred years are: 1. The emergence of a cultural consensus that a full life is about having time to do things other than those necessary to keep living, and to maintain the required tools. Cleaning the kitchen is in the latter category, and so there's a cultural imperative now to reduce the time spent on this task (theoretically to open up time for other things). 2. The move away from a concept of home and family (and the associated economy) that assigns some subset of a household (historically, the non-childhood females) a primary role in cleaning and maintainence, and towards an economy that demands that most adults work outside the home. This also places a premium on kitchen environments that are easier to clean.
- ip26 5y ago
  I like your points overall, but I do think there are tasks “necessary to keep living” that we do value. However with cleaning specifically, there is limited artistry (cooking) or personal growth (exercise) to it.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I definitely agree (and try to bring that attitude to my own life). However, it is much easier to do this when these tasks do not take "too long".
  - Swizec 5y ago
    > However with cleaning specifically Cleaning can be a great way to relax your brain. It's menial enough to be effortless with just enough thinking to occupy the fidgety part of your brain so you can think deep in the background. Like a walk in the park. Meditative.
    - ehou 5y ago
      I like to wash some things (a good knife or an aluminum pan) by hand - meditative yes - and let my dishwasher handle the rest.
derbOac 5y ago
For some reason -- probably human tendency to find points of contact -- this reminds me of something we've wrestled with a lot the last few years, which is how to decide what to upgrade or renovate and what to retain in our home. Modernism is old enough at this point that you can have a home with modernist design and find that some things look aged or somewhat dated, and yet be modern contemporary, and unusual. For us this has led to a lot of discussions along the lines of "this is clearly old, somewhat dated, and showing signs of age, but it's functional and is unusual even for its time; do we replace it completely, or somehow restore it, or replace it with something similar in aesthetic but updated?" Some of the things in our home have survived through the period of being dated and are now solidly vintage (in a good way), yet modern, and others are still in this fuzzy boundary area. Some things we've replaced, some things we've restored, but our whole house is like this. The simple answer is that you do what you want, but sometimes that's unclear, as your own feelings about things are unclear, and sometimes things have unexpected benefits or costs. Housing and home design, at least in the US, is this one area where I think issues of sustainability maintenance, and reuse haven't really entered the discussion very well. With homes of a certain age, yes, there's plenty of discussion of renovation and historical restoration. But it feels like there's a sort of denial about modernist homes being as old as they often can be, and what it means to be "modern" but old.
- kijin 5y ago
  The entire home doesn't need to follow a consistent theme. Different parts of a home serve different functions, and are often occupied by different members of the family who may have wildly different tastes. You can keep the old parts that still work while introducing new things. Life is full of fuzzy boundaries, and so do our homes. History and idiosyncrasy make things interesting. An excessively consistent look, on the other hand, feels to me like a carefully arranged snapshot with no context and no life. I for one prefer a soft, cozy, woody and/or steampunk theme for the living, dining, and bedrooms; a sterile, industrial, ultra-modern theme for the kitchen and bathroom where sanitation matters; and a futuristic theme for the home office where all my Turing-complete gadgets live. Sadly I can't have all of them for the time being, but one day I hope to! :)
  - 5y ago
personjerry 5y ago
In a lot of parts of the world, the kitchen in fact looks less like the photo and more like the painting
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I read the article as being about the evolution of kitchen design (and other spaces) in the world of middle class Americans. 100 or 150 years ago, the kitchen in many parts of the USA would have looked more like the painting too.
Barrin92 5y ago
Strongly disagree with the authors choice of conflating what they call high modernism with utilitarianism or lack of interest in aesthetics. Personally this cozy, homely, "clay pot on the floor", pastoralism does nothing for me. I'm a big fan of industrial design and I don't think characterizing it as 'low-maintenance', even though it may be that as well, does it justice. >"Spatially, the minimalist and glossy-modernist trends have the unfortunate habit of moving toward a void" What's wrong with voids for example? One of the most interesting design choices that I came across recently were the designs in Denis Villeneuve's Dune that he made for the interiors. Very empty, but also very awe inspiring.
- vinceguidry 5y ago
  I welcomed and enjoyed the author's deconstruction of the painting, but it almost seemed orthogonal to the point they were making. A near-complete tangent, heh.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    I dunno, it sounded very clearly connected with the topic, and an illustration of the topic with a concrete example. Perhaps you wanted an abstract presentation of the point instead?
    - vinceguidry 5y ago
      It was pretty far from concrete. I followed the logic just fine when I was reading it myself, but seeing parent's reaction made me realize just how abstractly connected to the thesis it was.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I think the question is not really about avoiding voids (no pun intended), but what role they would/should/could play within residential spaces. Do we want the interior (or the exterior) of our homes to be very awe inspiring? Obviously, there's more than one answer to that question.
- 5y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Needed to make another comment. When I was growing up I became fascinated/obsessed with the counter-culture in the US, especially the architectural side of it. I still own copies of both of the two "Domebooks", along with Lloyd Kahn's "Shelter", Ken Kern's "The Owner Builder and the Code: the politics of building your own home" and other classics of that era. But among my favorite books from that time is "Handmade Houses: a guide to the woodbutcher's art". You can find many images from the book here: https://www.google.com/search?q=handmade+houses+a+guide+to+the+woodbutchers+art&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=handmade+houses+a+guide+to+t... The architecture and design is much, much more aligned to the second two examples from Simon's article: hand-made, unique, touch friendly. One might even subsume all these under the term "funky" (though this word has more than one meaning). When I was 18, these were the sorts of houses I thought I would live in as an adult. 40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses fills me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand how much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain them. I feel conflicted about this: the aesthetics are far more appealing to than any contemporary "standard" buildings. Nevertheless I do feel very aware that I would likely develop a daily growing resentment towards the way every uneven, non-smooth surface would represent a new obstacle to cleanliness. And these sorts of structures and designs really will just accumulate dirt over time, no matter the efforts put into slowing that down. This inner conflict raises all kinds of questions within me about the actual value of cleanliness, and about the balance that architecture creates and enforces between certain feelings we might want to have within our homes and the nature of our day to day lives within them.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses fills me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand how much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain them Having lived in several rural houses, not dissimilar to those, not that much.
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  I feel this too.
psd1 5y ago
I have a taste for "genteel dilapidation". I'm a lover of buildings where the wooden ridgelines have sagged a little over time. I adore the imperfections in Georgian glass. Replacing old glass with float glass jumps out instantly to me. I suffer some weeds and wildflowers to grow in the cracks in my patio. It looks comfortable, and humane.
jmole 5y ago
If you look at what fills cabinets like the ones in your own kitchen, it is a collection of objects that never beckon to be thrown away. The 5 different BBQ spice mixes that you pick up every time you host a BBQ. The Avocado oil you bought but never use. The various kitchen gadgets that once seemed like a good idea. All of the "enchantment", the food that spoils, the food that was once actually alive, now lives in a special dark, cool cabinet called the refrigerator. The modern kitchen is a response to this paradox. If you've ever lived in a house without lots of kitchen storage, the clutter that accumulates in all the nooks and crannies is overwhelming.
gbjw 5y ago
Couldn't agree more with this assessment. I'd also like to repost the top comment on Medium since it might be particularly germane to the HN community: '...a spirit influenced by gnosticism (even if it doesn't know it): the body and the material world is bad, the spirit is everything. So the best space, becomes no space: the virtual space of the internet, for example. Meta, indeed.'
- rgrieselhuber 5y ago
  Thank you for copying this here. Once you start to become aware of it, the anti-human spirit of Gnosticism can be seen in many places.
maxerickson 5y ago
"Sausage Party", the 2016 movie, imagines supernatural spirits in a grocery store. Aesthetic preferences are not universal, it's interesting how much discussion ends up being about how a given set should be preferred, rather than simply expressing that they happen to be preferred by a given individual.
fferen 5y ago
I totally disagree. I find more mystery in large, industrial spaces than the rustic kitchen in the painting. I can easily picture "spirits dancing" in supermarket aisles and warehouses. The popularity of Liminal spaces [1] suggests that many people agree. Different aesthetics for different times. [1] https://twitter.com/SpaceLiminalBot https://twitter.com/SpaceLiminalBot
jonnycomputer 5y ago
So, I happen to be planning a kitchen remodel right now, and I happened to have up a picture of my kitchen while reading and comparing. And while I can agree with the aesthetic argument the author is going for, I think that it misses something too: primarily, what kitchens are for, which is cooking food, and sometimes the eating of it. In my kitchen, if I have to chop something, I have to shove something aside. Sometimes I use my stove top as counter space. What would I give for some of that void the author critiques, just so I could chop the onions, or turn around and not knock something off the counter, or trip over the can. And trust me, "easy to clean" is no bad thing. I'm sure some might think that the aesthetic joys of cleaning food from between cracks and beneath appliances gives the richness to life that the rich cheat themselves out of somehow, but no. Its an awful soul sucking waste of the one life you've got to live. Real-estate isn't interested in making things personal, because they are trying to sell something for others to personalize. Go look at real lived in kitchens if you want to make the critique; not real estate ads which are selling a dream.
- simonsarris 5y ago
  (I'm the author) For what it's worth, I designed my own kitchen (and house for that matter), and me and my wife spend upwards of 2 hours a day in this room because we cook almost every single day, making and baking and preserving a large number of foods from scratch. I simply think that using the kitchen doesn't just have to be easy, it has to be joyous. If it's one of the rooms we use the most, and entertain guests in too, it should be beautiful as well as useful. I am not against counter space!, but against a material drabness that seems to make spaces less than alive.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    All the kitchens I see have a fridge covered in magnets from holidays, photos of children, and children's paintings. Items on every surface, signs of life. Except when they're emptied to take photos for selling the house.
    - beebeepka 5y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
I have been in both types of homes and vastly prefer the modern open kitchen. What isn’t mentioned is that the kitchen in the old times was small and isolated from the living and dining rooms where the guests were entertained. The kitchen was the domain of servants and women, who mere meant to provide the food but not the conversation. In modern times we have come away from that and our design reflects that. We are much more egalitarian. Kitchens are now incorporated into our entertainment of guests. That large island is now likely to be where food is served buffer style. There is lots of place so that guests and come in and conversation with whomever is cooking the food. More than anything, the more “modern” style reflects the kitchen becoming a public space whereas before it was a private space. I prefer the modern public space kitchen.
- simonsarris 5y ago
  Note, there has actually been a jump from hearths (kitchens as living rooms, as you will find in almost all dutch art of this period) to separated kitchens (more of a Victorian and/or very upper class thing), and recently a return to a pseudo-hearth "kitchen as gathering space." But it's not precisely new. I am somewhat surprised by your comment, because I do not think the contrasting painting is particularly closed (the ceilings are taller, I thnik), and the kitchen I designed for myself[1] is fairly open, though it is not as spacious or dependent on electric light (it is touched by a wall of southern windows). In some ways I consider the richo kitchen more claustrophic than open, owing to the large amount of upper cabinets. What makes the richo kitchen feel off, in terms of openness, is the hallway effect with the adjacent rooms. But my critique is mostly one of the materials making the space and the utilitarian feel. [1] A couple images are here: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1450480908822265865 https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1450480908822265865 Note there are now two sets of shelves, we have been slowly adding to the kitchen since we built the house.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    That's a very nice human-scale kitchen you've made there. One of the NY cooking staff recently put out a call for photos of people's pantries. Given that the people replying are likely to be somewhat more into cooking than an average person, I was amazed at the simplicity and "non-professionalism" of all the images I saw. Just simple shelving with somewhat random supplies packed in a not particularly access-efficient way. Quite different from what you'd expect to find behind the cabinet doors of your "richo kitchen". However, I question your use of the term "utilitarian" when you're describing the "richo kitchen". To me it feels much more decorated than (for example) your own kitchen, which has lots of wonderful small aesthetic details, but the overall vibe of which I would be more likely to call "utilitarian". Your kitchen is there for you and your partner (I assume, from the photo) to prepare food and clean up. The "richo kitchen" is that too, but also a statement about wealth, specifically the wealth to have cabinets enclosing that much stuff.
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shaunxcode 5y ago
The dialectic take being we should not have personal kitchens in the first place. We should consider what communal cooking and eating spaces will look like.
- nicbou 5y ago
  This was attempted in the Soviet Union. I heard about it here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-book-of-tasty-and-healthy-food/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-book-of-tasty-and...
1970-01-01 5y ago
>These pictures are from a real estate listing, but I trust you know what otherwise fills the counters of a kitchen today. Contrasting modern real estate photos with a 250 year old painting is a hard ask. The painting and photos are so vastly different in both time and detail that I don't think the author was able to make their point.
aaronbrethorst 5y ago
The first impression to strike me is one of storage. There are so many cabinets! Gotta have a lot of storage so that you can reduce the number of times per week you get in your car, drive 3.79 miles to the supermarket, and drive back home. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-households-do-their-main-grocery-shopping-at-supermarkets-and-supercenters-regardless-of-income/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-hou...
cracrecry 5y ago
Old kitchen are beautiful to contemplate but also a pain in the @ss to clean. Primum vivere, deinde philosophare. You can tell the person that spends hours writing something on a blog that he should spend those hours every single week cleaning the kitchen and the beauty disappears. I can do things like navigate HN because cleaning my kitchen is easy. A painter was complaining while talking to me about the ugly tractors and machines being used in rural areas instead of manual scythes and rakes. Again it was obvious he had never actually used those as I did when I was younger.
- majormajor 5y ago
  I agree, to me this is a whole lot of nostalgia with little of substance to say. My bedroom, dining room, and living room are all much more intimate than my kitchen. My kitchen, on the other hand, is a functional place used in between my time in those living spaces. So organizational tools like cabinets and clean workspaces and bright lighting are all very useful for it. I have the luxury of not having to live out of it, but it's still indoors and connected to the living spaces, so a certain level of cleanliness is much appreciated too (contrast to a garage). I find any claim that aspects of modern life are somehow making us desire practicality in these manners (and that we've lost something as a result) deeply suspicious. We developed all these things in response to desires and pain points. Often quite literal pain points of backbreaking manual domestic labor.
AlbertCory 5y ago
Great article. As so many things do, it reminds me of music and also architecture: Music: I prefer live albums to polished studio perfection. It's not just that "mistakes show they're human" although they do -- it's that they have patina. There's that word, thanks, Simon. A live album is a recording of human beings doing the best they can do at that moment. It's no coincidence that the Allman Brothers were just a minor band until Live at Fillmore East knocked everyone's socks off. Architecture: "brutalist" as invoked by TimTheTinker is a good word for steel-and-glass buildings, and that modern kitchen. That real estate photo is brutalist. Any mess you made there would be completely intolerable and impossible to ignore even for 10 minutes; an affront to the very spirit of the place. On the other hand, the Shaker style of furniture is human but not ornate, and in fact I have a (very) modified Shaker style in my own kitchen cabinets.
Exuma 5y ago
@simon let's see a photograph of the whole kitchen, you have piqued my interest
porknubbins 5y ago
This article reminds me a lot of Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows essay about Japanese aesthstics. For some reason a point that always stuck with me is it is much more relaxing to use the bathroom in the quiet dark obscurity of the traditional Japanese outhouse than in a bright electrically lit porcelain western bathroom. I kind of think about my house design like this- with some intentionally dark, relaxing spaces.
bryananderson 5y ago
I think there’s a clear reason why the author’s kitchen has a lived-in, personalized feel while the real estate listing does not, and it’s not particularly philosophical. The author’s kitchen was designed by the author, who knows exactly what he likes, exactly what would make his kitchen reflect his authentic, messy self. The same is true of the pastoral kitchen scene, regardless of what one thinks of it aesthetically—it was designed by and for its own inhabitants and their unique quirks. The real-estate property was designed without knowing who would inhabit it, or what their tastes and preferences would be. There are thousands of potential owners, and the important thing if you want to sell a property is to alienate as few of them as possible. Thus, homes that are designed without one buyer in mind tend to feature middle-of-the-road aesthetics that as many people as possible will find acceptable, even if none of them feel like it’s their perfect kitchen with all the little touches that make them their own unique selves. The majority of people can tolerate a clean space, but we are each messy in our own unique way. Someone else’s messiness might be intolerable to me, and mine to them. I’m not sure how to scale the kind of design that feels messy and human, since most people have neither the time to build their own living space from scratch nor the resources to hire someone to create a bespoke space just for them.
j7ake 5y ago
First kitchen from real estate looks like I can do some serious cooking for a large party. Author’s kitchen looks like there is no space to even cut an onion. The copper pan looks great but how does one cook acidic foods? Acids leach copper into foods. I want a pan that can cook any foods without having to think whether it will give me health problems. Practicality trumps patina.

170 points by simonsarris 5y ago

The modern kitchen isn't "utilitarian", lots of it could be simpler and more functional. Cement slab flooring with epoxy coat is what you see in industrial kitchens (and mine!) because its tough to mar and easy to clean. This place has some fake wood "laminate". The cabinet doors are covered in frilly, unnecessary detail, bright work handles etc. The "center island" table this is a great idea but it should be an open frame table on casters. I don't know what you'd properly call this aesthetic, but its there and it has screwed over the design of the space at the cost of much utility.

ip26 5y ago
A kitchen is somewhere you live as well as work. Cement slab flooring is pretty uncomfortable to spend two hours working barefoot, especially in winter. It’s also worth acknowledging the existence of show kitchens, which really don’t care about utility at all, and considering them separately.
- kijin 5y ago
  Nobody in an industrial kitchen is supposed to work barefoot. :) For homes, heated cement slabs are so much better than the regular stuff. Slabs embedded with hot water tubes have a fairly large heat capacity, so it stays warm all day and transfers heat directly into your feet and up through the rest of your body no matter where you're standing. A layer of soft organic material on top of the slab will make it more comfortable to stand on as well, as long as you choose something that's easy to clean.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Ours works well 9 months of the year; its does suck in winter. in hot summertime barefoots on it works well :) "somewhere you live" is exactly the point. Our house has been a kennel as much as a house. Few people want that, we're just weird.
nerdponx 5y ago
You are describing extreme industrial utility. The blog author is describing pastoral whimsy. The modern American kitchen is probably about 2/3 of the way towards your version on a 1-d spectrum.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  > pastoral whimsy I think that's an ungenerous term for what was merely normal for thousands of years into the past. I'd argue we're still recovering from the brutalist ugliness of 1960s fashion and ideas -- the notion that despite our humble origins, man could transcend nature and do better than it. The widespread adoption of baby formula over breastfeeding is perhaps the saddest outworking of this notion, but it showed up everywhere else -- in brutalist architecture, cold metal furniture, metal Christmas trees, linoleum floors... Not that new synthetic materials are bad, but I would have hated to live through a time when natural beauty was at such a cultural ebb. I think we're still recovering from it, and we need more design leaders to help us remember natural beauty. Here are a couple of quotes from William Morris: "everything made by man's hands has a form, which must be either beautiful or ugly; beautiful if it is in accord with Nature, and helps her; ugly if it is discordant with Nature, and thwarts her; it cannot be indifferent." He also wrote, "Have nothing in your house you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    You're responding to something that isn't what I said. Look at the painting and then look at the photo of the staged corner in the authors kitchen. The big difference is that the painting of the real working kitchen depicted an actual working space, it was busy and active and full of stuff and kind of chaotic. The upper walls were probably greasy from cooking and it probably smelled like food and wood smoke. I more or less agree with the sentiment of the article, by the way. The sterile home aesthetic makes absolutely no sense to me and it's not something I want or live out in my own life. But the reality is that a cute kitchen display like in the photo is neither practical nor sustainable unless you spend a lot of your time cleaning. I use cabinets because I actually want my counter space and because when I leave stuff out on the counter it gets dirty and dusty. Patina doesn't bother me, but grime does. Therefore I called it "pastoral whimsy". People started using cabinets because they wanted them and could actually afford them, not because they were somehow indoctrinated into using them.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
Those open storage tables and shelves that commercial kitchens¹ have are usable there because they have the main dry storage outside of the kitchen space. You keep some essentials there that are used many times every day, and the rest is moved into the kitchen as part of the prep phase and cleared out at the end of service. In big kitchens this is enough of a task that it's a role on its own: porter. If you were to use those as your main ingredient and tool storage without clearing it every day it would be a mess both in terms of visual clutter and just flour and shit spilling out everywhere. Is that more minimal than putting cabinet doors over it? I don't know actually, maybe. Which indicates to me that "minimal" is a subjective judgement based on certain criteria, and there are multiple valid measures of kitchen minimalism. I grew up in and worked for decades in commercial kitchens and I am often saying this. Commercial kitchens have a different set of constraints than home kitchens, and commercial kitchen design adopted wholesale is not going to be more usable than a well-designed consumer kitchen. It's not more minimal per se either. That open storage demands a closet worth of plastic bins to keep ingredients in, for example. BTW commercial kitchens pretty much all have terra cotta tiles for some reason. Must just be a good combo of cheap, durable, reasonably non-slip (which coated concrete definitely is not). ¹: Not industrial kitchens that's a different thing.

rgovostes 5y ago

Previously from the same author, a philosophical two-part series on building his own home. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881363

ARCarr 5y ago
After reading the original post I was reminded of the article you shared and went to go check if it was the same guy. Definitely a good read!
simonsarris 5y ago
I'm in the middle of rewriting these, expanding them, and finishing the series now, for the substack.

talkingtab 5y ago

There are some places where I have stayed that have a magic to them. And yes, I say that even though I am a geek. An old farm B&B in Holland, old cabins in California. I have always wondered why I feel "different" in those places. This article has the answer. Of the two kitchens in the article, which would I want to be in? Which would make me feel at "home"? I learned something from this, thanks!

tomc1985 5y ago

Not exactly sure why this guy thinks that idolizing old art makes him the pinnacle of modern design. Oh, no! No shadows! The (lack of) humanity in it! He's just saying your kitchen should look like a Rembrandt painting, as if that aesthetic was truly better. (Hint: it isn't)

mahogany 5y ago
Just curious -- why be so dismissive and snarky? At the very least, it's an interesting discussion to have, and one you clearly have an opinion about. > Hint: it isn't For what it's worth, I think it is, but it's obviously subjective. The modern kitchen aesthetic looks alien, sterile, and uninviting in contrast to the Laquy painting, which looks lived in and homely. In short, the modern kitchen image makes me feel uneasy and the painting makes me feel calm.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  > In short, the modern kitchen image makes me feel uneasy and the painting makes me feel calm. Are you saying that because the article suggested it? Personally I think the spaciousness of the modern kitchen depicted is liberating and freeing. I have a cramped kitchen and it sucks.
  - mahogany 5y ago
    No, I explained why it makes me feel that way but I can expand. The modern kitchen image looks sterile, pristine, and I feel anxiety at the thought of dirtying it. I also think it looks alien and I can't imagine where the materials came from to construct it. I feel no connection to it as a "human place" and thus wouldn't want to live in it. Additionally, I think size is related to aesthetic but it's an independent topic. You can have a small but "modern aesthetic" kitchen. I agree, a cramped kitchen sucks!
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Because I find regressive calls for a past aesthetic tiresome, predictable, and cliched. We do not live in the past, we live in the present. Nostalgia is fun but a highly overrated feeling, and the paintings he references are idealized depictions of life at that time. Not to mention how WASPy and Western-centric it is, I'm sure someone from Asia, Africa, or even some latin state, might feel very different.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

This was a lovely piece of observational writing. I think that the "easy to clean" part of the list of descriptors here is among the most important. Among many other things, two of the things that have changed in the last couple of hundred years are: 1. The emergence of a cultural consensus that a full life is about having time to do things other than those necessary to keep living, and to maintain the required tools. Cleaning the kitchen is in the latter category, and so there's a cultural imperative now to reduce the time spent on this task (theoretically to open up time for other things). 2. The move away from a concept of home and family (and the associated economy) that assigns some subset of a household (historically, the non-childhood females) a primary role in cleaning and maintainence, and towards an economy that demands that most adults work outside the home. This also places a premium on kitchen environments that are easier to clean.

ip26 5y ago
I like your points overall, but I do think there are tasks “necessary to keep living” that we do value. However with cleaning specifically, there is limited artistry (cooking) or personal growth (exercise) to it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I definitely agree (and try to bring that attitude to my own life). However, it is much easier to do this when these tasks do not take "too long".
- Swizec 5y ago
  > However with cleaning specifically Cleaning can be a great way to relax your brain. It's menial enough to be effortless with just enough thinking to occupy the fidgety part of your brain so you can think deep in the background. Like a walk in the park. Meditative.
  - ehou 5y ago
    I like to wash some things (a good knife or an aluminum pan) by hand - meditative yes - and let my dishwasher handle the rest.

derbOac 5y ago

For some reason -- probably human tendency to find points of contact -- this reminds me of something we've wrestled with a lot the last few years, which is how to decide what to upgrade or renovate and what to retain in our home. Modernism is old enough at this point that you can have a home with modernist design and find that some things look aged or somewhat dated, and yet be modern contemporary, and unusual. For us this has led to a lot of discussions along the lines of "this is clearly old, somewhat dated, and showing signs of age, but it's functional and is unusual even for its time; do we replace it completely, or somehow restore it, or replace it with something similar in aesthetic but updated?" Some of the things in our home have survived through the period of being dated and are now solidly vintage (in a good way), yet modern, and others are still in this fuzzy boundary area. Some things we've replaced, some things we've restored, but our whole house is like this. The simple answer is that you do what you want, but sometimes that's unclear, as your own feelings about things are unclear, and sometimes things have unexpected benefits or costs. Housing and home design, at least in the US, is this one area where I think issues of sustainability maintenance, and reuse haven't really entered the discussion very well. With homes of a certain age, yes, there's plenty of discussion of renovation and historical restoration. But it feels like there's a sort of denial about modernist homes being as old as they often can be, and what it means to be "modern" but old.

kijin 5y ago
The entire home doesn't need to follow a consistent theme. Different parts of a home serve different functions, and are often occupied by different members of the family who may have wildly different tastes. You can keep the old parts that still work while introducing new things. Life is full of fuzzy boundaries, and so do our homes. History and idiosyncrasy make things interesting. An excessively consistent look, on the other hand, feels to me like a carefully arranged snapshot with no context and no life. I for one prefer a soft, cozy, woody and/or steampunk theme for the living, dining, and bedrooms; a sterile, industrial, ultra-modern theme for the kitchen and bathroom where sanitation matters; and a futuristic theme for the home office where all my Turing-complete gadgets live. Sadly I can't have all of them for the time being, but one day I hope to! :)
- 5y ago

personjerry 5y ago

In a lot of parts of the world, the kitchen in fact looks less like the photo and more like the painting

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I read the article as being about the evolution of kitchen design (and other spaces) in the world of middle class Americans. 100 or 150 years ago, the kitchen in many parts of the USA would have looked more like the painting too.

Barrin92 5y ago

Strongly disagree with the authors choice of conflating what they call high modernism with utilitarianism or lack of interest in aesthetics. Personally this cozy, homely, "clay pot on the floor", pastoralism does nothing for me. I'm a big fan of industrial design and I don't think characterizing it as 'low-maintenance', even though it may be that as well, does it justice. >"Spatially, the minimalist and glossy-modernist trends have the unfortunate habit of moving toward a void" What's wrong with voids for example? One of the most interesting design choices that I came across recently were the designs in Denis Villeneuve's Dune that he made for the interiors. Very empty, but also very awe inspiring.

vinceguidry 5y ago
I welcomed and enjoyed the author's deconstruction of the painting, but it almost seemed orthogonal to the point they were making. A near-complete tangent, heh.
- coldtea 5y ago
  I dunno, it sounded very clearly connected with the topic, and an illustration of the topic with a concrete example. Perhaps you wanted an abstract presentation of the point instead?
  - vinceguidry 5y ago
    It was pretty far from concrete. I followed the logic just fine when I was reading it myself, but seeing parent's reaction made me realize just how abstractly connected to the thesis it was.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I think the question is not really about avoiding voids (no pun intended), but what role they would/should/could play within residential spaces. Do we want the interior (or the exterior) of our homes to be very awe inspiring? Obviously, there's more than one answer to that question.
5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

Needed to make another comment. When I was growing up I became fascinated/obsessed with the counter-culture in the US, especially the architectural side of it. I still own copies of both of the two "Domebooks", along with Lloyd Kahn's "Shelter", Ken Kern's "The Owner Builder and the Code: the politics of building your own home" and other classics of that era. But among my favorite books from that time is "Handmade Houses: a guide to the woodbutcher's art". You can find many images from the book here: https://www.google.com/search?q=handmade+houses+a+guide+to+the+woodbutchers+art&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=handmade+houses+a+guide+to+t... The architecture and design is much, much more aligned to the second two examples from Simon's article: hand-made, unique, touch friendly. One might even subsume all these under the term "funky" (though this word has more than one meaning). When I was 18, these were the sorts of houses I thought I would live in as an adult. 40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses fills me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand how much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain them. I feel conflicted about this: the aesthetics are far more appealing to than any contemporary "standard" buildings. Nevertheless I do feel very aware that I would likely develop a daily growing resentment towards the way every uneven, non-smooth surface would represent a new obstacle to cleanliness. And these sorts of structures and designs really will just accumulate dirt over time, no matter the efforts put into slowing that down. This inner conflict raises all kinds of questions within me about the actual value of cleanliness, and about the balance that architecture creates and enforces between certain feelings we might want to have within our homes and the nature of our day to day lives within them.

coldtea 5y ago
>40 years later, the idea of living in any of theses houses fills me with a certain kind of dread, because I now understand how much work it would be to keep them clean and to maintain them Having lived in several rural houses, not dissimilar to those, not that much.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
I feel this too.

psd1 5y ago

I have a taste for "genteel dilapidation". I'm a lover of buildings where the wooden ridgelines have sagged a little over time. I adore the imperfections in Georgian glass. Replacing old glass with float glass jumps out instantly to me. I suffer some weeds and wildflowers to grow in the cracks in my patio. It looks comfortable, and humane.

jmole 5y ago

If you look at what fills cabinets like the ones in your own kitchen, it is a collection of objects that never beckon to be thrown away. The 5 different BBQ spice mixes that you pick up every time you host a BBQ. The Avocado oil you bought but never use. The various kitchen gadgets that once seemed like a good idea. All of the "enchantment", the food that spoils, the food that was once actually alive, now lives in a special dark, cool cabinet called the refrigerator. The modern kitchen is a response to this paradox. If you've ever lived in a house without lots of kitchen storage, the clutter that accumulates in all the nooks and crannies is overwhelming.

gbjw 5y ago

Couldn't agree more with this assessment. I'd also like to repost the top comment on Medium since it might be particularly germane to the HN community: '...a spirit influenced by gnosticism (even if it doesn't know it): the body and the material world is bad, the spirit is everything. So the best space, becomes no space: the virtual space of the internet, for example. Meta, indeed.'

rgrieselhuber 5y ago
Thank you for copying this here. Once you start to become aware of it, the anti-human spirit of Gnosticism can be seen in many places.

maxerickson 5y ago

"Sausage Party", the 2016 movie, imagines supernatural spirits in a grocery store. Aesthetic preferences are not universal, it's interesting how much discussion ends up being about how a given set should be preferred, rather than simply expressing that they happen to be preferred by a given individual.

fferen 5y ago

I totally disagree. I find more mystery in large, industrial spaces than the rustic kitchen in the painting. I can easily picture "spirits dancing" in supermarket aisles and warehouses. The popularity of Liminal spaces [1] suggests that many people agree. Different aesthetics for different times. [1] https://twitter.com/SpaceLiminalBot https://twitter.com/SpaceLiminalBot

jonnycomputer 5y ago

So, I happen to be planning a kitchen remodel right now, and I happened to have up a picture of my kitchen while reading and comparing. And while I can agree with the aesthetic argument the author is going for, I think that it misses something too: primarily, what kitchens are for, which is cooking food, and sometimes the eating of it. In my kitchen, if I have to chop something, I have to shove something aside. Sometimes I use my stove top as counter space. What would I give for some of that void the author critiques, just so I could chop the onions, or turn around and not knock something off the counter, or trip over the can. And trust me, "easy to clean" is no bad thing. I'm sure some might think that the aesthetic joys of cleaning food from between cracks and beneath appliances gives the richness to life that the rich cheat themselves out of somehow, but no. Its an awful soul sucking waste of the one life you've got to live. Real-estate isn't interested in making things personal, because they are trying to sell something for others to personalize. Go look at real lived in kitchens if you want to make the critique; not real estate ads which are selling a dream.

simonsarris 5y ago
(I'm the author) For what it's worth, I designed my own kitchen (and house for that matter), and me and my wife spend upwards of 2 hours a day in this room because we cook almost every single day, making and baking and preserving a large number of foods from scratch. I simply think that using the kitchen doesn't just have to be easy, it has to be joyous. If it's one of the rooms we use the most, and entertain guests in too, it should be beautiful as well as useful. I am not against counter space!, but against a material drabness that seems to make spaces less than alive.
- mavhc 5y ago
  All the kitchens I see have a fridge covered in magnets from holidays, photos of children, and children's paintings. Items on every surface, signs of life. Except when they're emptied to take photos for selling the house.
  - beebeepka 5y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

I have been in both types of homes and vastly prefer the modern open kitchen. What isn’t mentioned is that the kitchen in the old times was small and isolated from the living and dining rooms where the guests were entertained. The kitchen was the domain of servants and women, who mere meant to provide the food but not the conversation. In modern times we have come away from that and our design reflects that. We are much more egalitarian. Kitchens are now incorporated into our entertainment of guests. That large island is now likely to be where food is served buffer style. There is lots of place so that guests and come in and conversation with whomever is cooking the food. More than anything, the more “modern” style reflects the kitchen becoming a public space whereas before it was a private space. I prefer the modern public space kitchen.

simonsarris 5y ago
Note, there has actually been a jump from hearths (kitchens as living rooms, as you will find in almost all dutch art of this period) to separated kitchens (more of a Victorian and/or very upper class thing), and recently a return to a pseudo-hearth "kitchen as gathering space." But it's not precisely new. I am somewhat surprised by your comment, because I do not think the contrasting painting is particularly closed (the ceilings are taller, I thnik), and the kitchen I designed for myself[1] is fairly open, though it is not as spacious or dependent on electric light (it is touched by a wall of southern windows). In some ways I consider the richo kitchen more claustrophic than open, owing to the large amount of upper cabinets. What makes the richo kitchen feel off, in terms of openness, is the hallway effect with the adjacent rooms. But my critique is mostly one of the materials making the space and the utilitarian feel. [1] A couple images are here: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1450480908822265865 https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1450480908822265865 Note there are now two sets of shelves, we have been slowly adding to the kitchen since we built the house.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  That's a very nice human-scale kitchen you've made there. One of the NY cooking staff recently put out a call for photos of people's pantries. Given that the people replying are likely to be somewhat more into cooking than an average person, I was amazed at the simplicity and "non-professionalism" of all the images I saw. Just simple shelving with somewhat random supplies packed in a not particularly access-efficient way. Quite different from what you'd expect to find behind the cabinet doors of your "richo kitchen". However, I question your use of the term "utilitarian" when you're describing the "richo kitchen". To me it feels much more decorated than (for example) your own kitchen, which has lots of wonderful small aesthetic details, but the overall vibe of which I would be more likely to call "utilitarian". Your kitchen is there for you and your partner (I assume, from the photo) to prepare food and clean up. The "richo kitchen" is that too, but also a statement about wealth, specifically the wealth to have cabinets enclosing that much stuff.

deleted 5y ago

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shaunxcode 5y ago

The dialectic take being we should not have personal kitchens in the first place. We should consider what communal cooking and eating spaces will look like.

nicbou 5y ago
This was attempted in the Soviet Union. I heard about it here: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-book-of-tasty-and-healthy-food/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-book-of-tasty-and...

1970-01-01 5y ago

>These pictures are from a real estate listing, but I trust you know what otherwise fills the counters of a kitchen today. Contrasting modern real estate photos with a 250 year old painting is a hard ask. The painting and photos are so vastly different in both time and detail that I don't think the author was able to make their point.

aaronbrethorst 5y ago

The first impression to strike me is one of storage. There are so many cabinets! Gotta have a lot of storage so that you can reduce the number of times per week you get in your car, drive 3.79 miles to the supermarket, and drive back home. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-households-do-their-main-grocery-shopping-at-supermarkets-and-supercenters-regardless-of-income/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2015/august/most-us-hou...

cracrecry 5y ago

Old kitchen are beautiful to contemplate but also a pain in the @ss to clean. Primum vivere, deinde philosophare. You can tell the person that spends hours writing something on a blog that he should spend those hours every single week cleaning the kitchen and the beauty disappears. I can do things like navigate HN because cleaning my kitchen is easy. A painter was complaining while talking to me about the ugly tractors and machines being used in rural areas instead of manual scythes and rakes. Again it was obvious he had never actually used those as I did when I was younger.

majormajor 5y ago
I agree, to me this is a whole lot of nostalgia with little of substance to say. My bedroom, dining room, and living room are all much more intimate than my kitchen. My kitchen, on the other hand, is a functional place used in between my time in those living spaces. So organizational tools like cabinets and clean workspaces and bright lighting are all very useful for it. I have the luxury of not having to live out of it, but it's still indoors and connected to the living spaces, so a certain level of cleanliness is much appreciated too (contrast to a garage). I find any claim that aspects of modern life are somehow making us desire practicality in these manners (and that we've lost something as a result) deeply suspicious. We developed all these things in response to desires and pain points. Often quite literal pain points of backbreaking manual domestic labor.

AlbertCory 5y ago

Great article. As so many things do, it reminds me of music and also architecture: Music: I prefer live albums to polished studio perfection. It's not just that "mistakes show they're human" although they do -- it's that they have patina. There's that word, thanks, Simon. A live album is a recording of human beings doing the best they can do at that moment. It's no coincidence that the Allman Brothers were just a minor band until Live at Fillmore East knocked everyone's socks off. Architecture: "brutalist" as invoked by TimTheTinker is a good word for steel-and-glass buildings, and that modern kitchen. That real estate photo is brutalist. Any mess you made there would be completely intolerable and impossible to ignore even for 10 minutes; an affront to the very spirit of the place. On the other hand, the Shaker style of furniture is human but not ornate, and in fact I have a (very) modified Shaker style in my own kitchen cabinets.

Exuma 5y ago

@simon let's see a photograph of the whole kitchen, you have piqued my interest

porknubbins 5y ago

This article reminds me a lot of Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows essay about Japanese aesthstics. For some reason a point that always stuck with me is it is much more relaxing to use the bathroom in the quiet dark obscurity of the traditional Japanese outhouse than in a bright electrically lit porcelain western bathroom. I kind of think about my house design like this- with some intentionally dark, relaxing spaces.

bryananderson 5y ago

I think there’s a clear reason why the author’s kitchen has a lived-in, personalized feel while the real estate listing does not, and it’s not particularly philosophical. The author’s kitchen was designed by the author, who knows exactly what he likes, exactly what would make his kitchen reflect his authentic, messy self. The same is true of the pastoral kitchen scene, regardless of what one thinks of it aesthetically—it was designed by and for its own inhabitants and their unique quirks. The real-estate property was designed without knowing who would inhabit it, or what their tastes and preferences would be. There are thousands of potential owners, and the important thing if you want to sell a property is to alienate as few of them as possible. Thus, homes that are designed without one buyer in mind tend to feature middle-of-the-road aesthetics that as many people as possible will find acceptable, even if none of them feel like it’s their perfect kitchen with all the little touches that make them their own unique selves. The majority of people can tolerate a clean space, but we are each messy in our own unique way. Someone else’s messiness might be intolerable to me, and mine to them. I’m not sure how to scale the kind of design that feels messy and human, since most people have neither the time to build their own living space from scratch nor the resources to hire someone to create a bespoke space just for them.

j7ake 5y ago

First kitchen from real estate looks like I can do some serious cooking for a large party. Author’s kitchen looks like there is no space to even cut an onion. The copper pan looks great but how does one cook acidic foods? Acids leach copper into foods. I want a pan that can cook any foods without having to think whether it will give me health problems. Practicality trumps patina.