I’m sketching another photobash, this time a scene of a solarpunk kitchen, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss an opportunity to include something cool.
My current plan is for this one to be a kind of summer kitchen (like old farmhouses around here used to have) which doubles as a three season porch. I think a lot of the elements could fit a normal kitchen, but some will compliment each other well with this design so it might be a good place to start (and it fits my theme of reexamining older ways of doing things for opportunities to reuse).
My current list of elements:
- a Tamara Solar Kitchen -style oven cooker
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A glass wall (and bit of roof) for growing plants and overwintering sensitive fruit trees
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A solar hot water rig on the roof
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Some sort of plan for compost (currently just a resealable bucket on a counter, but for those of you who know more about composting, I’m happy to build in your dream system)
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A sitting area since people always hang out in the kitchen while you’re cooking anyways.
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Maybe a parabolic grill set up outside, we’ll see if that feels redundant.
I feel like I’m missing a bunch of opportunities, so if you have any ideas, now’s a great time to add stuff
Lovely ideas.
As a start, I’d like to see fewer but more repairable appliances. The technology of the toaster hasn’t changed since my grandparents were setting up their first kitchen. One of the grandkids should have received that toaster as an inheritance.
We treat the wrong things as disposable.
Very much agreed! There’s a great section in Ecotopia about their appliances being uglier than American ones, but way more repairable, using common, compatible parts and simple construction. They didn’t allow products to go to market unless a volunteer committee of regular people with common tools were able to fix the most likely issues. I think a lot about how different the power tools I’ve inherited from my grandfather (with their external, standard-dimension motors and fairly open frames), are from say our washer and dryer, where everything is packed tightly into a sleek-looking shell. If my drill press motor ever goes, I can replace it with one from any local hardware store - if something goes wrong with my dryer, it’ll take a lot more research, careful disassembly, and I might need to call a specialist. Same for small appliances - why is there a Printed Circuit Board in my blender, which works exactly as well as my grandmother’s blender from the 1960s, which I could fix with patience, a soldering iron, and a multimeter?
I’ll have to look at older appliance catalogues and see if I can find any designs that make repairability visually clear - thanks!