Renacer de Chamanga Community House / Actuemos Ecuador © Kliwadenkonovas
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https://www.archdaily.com/1038300/the-kitchen-as-a-social-space-everyday-rituals-and-the-making-of-place
Can architecture be built from food? Between the fire that warms, the smells that spread, and the bodies that gather around the table, the apparent banality of cooking and eating reveals itself as a choreographed dance of spatial appropriation and belonging. These gestures organize routines, produce bonds, and transform the built environment into lived place. The kitchen—domestic, communal, or urban—thus ceases to be merely a functional space and affirms itself as a territory of encounter.
From Service Space to Social Center: Reconfiguring the Kitchen
Since the beginnings of humanity, fire has acted as a gathering element around which everyday life was organized, incorporating food preparation into collective rituals. Over the centuries, this fire—initially kept outdoors—was sheltered and progressively domesticated through different inventions, making the act of cooking increasingly automated and efficient.
Related Article The History of Kitchens: From the Great Banquets to the Built-in Furniture
In this process, the space of cooking was gradually displaced into secondary areas of the house, conceived as a technical environment. Two milestones of this period are the studies of American researcher Christine Frederick in 1922, which analyzed circulation and furniture layout as central factors in time optimization, and the development of the Frankfurt Kitchen by architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in Germany in 1926, inspired by the kitchens of German warships. Not by chance, both were conceived by women, in a historical context in which domestic labor was socially assigned to them.
The kitchen, however, evolves in direct relation to prevailing social models. From a space destined exclusively for women and servants, it becomes—within contemporary life—a shared environment, inhabited by everyone and therefore placed at the heart of the home. In this configuration, the kitchen turns into a space of encounter and permanence, now without social or economic barriers, where cooking is understood as a relational practice.
Victorian Kitchen, 1911. Author: Harris & Ewing, photographer. N STREET, KITCHEN. [Between 1905 and 1945] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress [www.loc.gov/item/2016861773/]. Image in the Public Domain [PD US Government]. Image via Wikimedia CommonsEveryday Rituals and the Construction of Place
Preparing food, sitting at the table, and sharing meals constitute everyday rituals with a structuring role in social life. More than biological functions, these repeated gestures produce and strengthen bonds.
Recent empirical data show that shared meals at home remain a predominant habit in many contemporary contexts, despite changes in lifestyles. In countries such as the United States, about nine out of ten adults report eating home-cooked meals at least a few times a week, with many indicating that dinners at home happen on most days. In global surveys, the average number of home meals per week is around 7.7, with regional variations, but still above many out-of-home dining patterns. Additionally, in large parts of Latin America, over 80% of the population cooks daily at home, and a significant majority both has lunch and dinner there regularly.
Casa del Calvari / ENDALT Arquitectes. Image © David Zarzoso
These numbers—beyond the economic and social conditions that often make cooking at home the only possible option—are also reinforced by the contemporary home cooking movement, which promotes preparing food at home as a healthier practice. In this context, domestic kitchens gain even greater prominence. They become architectures that recognize everyday rituals through scales that favor encounter, smooth spatial transitions, flexibility, and informality—enhancing place-making and lived experience. In contemporary Spain, as in Brazil, for example, the frequent integration of the kitchen with living and dining areas responds to ways of life marked by strong domestic sociability and prolonged time at the table, where eating and being together are central to family and community culture.
Casa no Pomar do Cafezal / Coletivo LEVANTE © Leonardo Finotti
More than iconic forms, these meaningful places emerge from small spatial gestures that gently accommodate shared social practices. In this sense, architectural quality is expressed in the ability to host such rituals—whether through soft materiality or through a privileged position in the house with adequate sunlight and ventilation—reaffirming the kitchen and adjacent living spaces as fundamental devices of belonging and well-being.
Casa entre Árvores / Ateliê de Arquitetura Líquida. Image © Bruno MeneghittiFrom the Stove to the City: Food as Urban Infrastructure
Food goes beyond the domestic realm when cooking becomes a collective practice capable of structuring urban life. From community kitchens to collective dining halls, food activates public space through everyday needs, promoting encounters and exchanges.
An emblematic example is the Community Kitchen of Terras da Costa in Costa da Caparica, Portugal, built in an informal neighborhood where nearly 500 people lived without proper water and sanitation. Through a participatory process with residents, this kitchen became a shared and self-managed space, offering basic conditions for collective cooking and gathering, with water points and minimal food-preparation infrastructure.
Community Kitchen of Terras da Costa / ateliermob + Colectivo Warehouse © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
It is also important to note that in contexts of crisis—such as forced displacement—food infrastructure takes on an even more essential role in mutual care and in building new forms of belonging. Displacement implies the loss of community ties and everyday practices, including cooking and sharing meals, which are fundamental for recovering routines and a sense of normality. In this context, collective kitchens—such as the Renacer de Chamanga Community House, Ecuador, built after the earthquake—emerge as architectural and social responses that not only meet basic food needs but also act as devices for generating belonging and rebuilding social networks.
Architecture, therefore, does not operate merely as an isolated object, but as an active support for dynamic urban uses: providing shelter and material conditions so that rituals can endure, regardless of circumstance.
Community Kitchen of Terras da Costa / ateliermob + Colectivo Warehouse © Fernando Guerra | FG+SGFood Culture as Territory: Where Flavors Meet Matter
The kitchen is the place where territory manifests through the senses. Ingredients, seasonings, and methods of preparation carry the climate and history of a place, just as materials and textures shape the space where cooking happens.
It is an urban terroir: a field of relationships where flavor meets matter. In Mediterranean kitchens, the aroma of warmed olive oil and dried herbs dialogues with mineral surfaces, light ceramics, and spaces open to daylight. In Asian contexts, intense vapors and long-simmering broths resonate with ventilated courtyards, earthy tones, and fluid transitions between inside and outside. In community kitchens, the mingling smells—of different recipes and histories—rest on durable surfaces and spaces open to collective appropriation.
Community Kitchen of Terras da Costa / ateliermob + Colectivo Warehouse © Fernando Guerra | FG+SG
Whether domestic, communal, or urban, these kitchens reveal sensitive architectures that do not precede rituals, but are born from them—showing that to design is also to transform smells and flavors into built space.
This article is part of the ArchDaily Topic: Coming Together and the Making of Place. Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.