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

  • A glass wall (and bit of roof) for growing plants and overwintering sensitive fruit trees

  • A solar hot water rig on the roof

  • 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)

  • A sitting area since people always hang out in the kitchen while you’re cooking anyways.

  • 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

    • schmorpEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I’ve grown oysters in old milk packages, plenty of people grow them in plastic buckets. Any old trash container that can be filled with some organic matter as substrate will be fine.

      No need to be in the dark, but they don’t want full sun, and plenty of moisture. Some of the more heat resistant species could thrive in a greenhouse, but most mushrooms that are currently cultivated like colder temperatures. Maybe the modern solarpunk kitchen needs a cold wet chamber for certain processes?

      In my real life I haven’t found the ideal fruiting chamber yet. I would like to avoid spending the additional energy for a air humidifier and would hope to find some other process already happening. In world building this could be the moisture of a community kitchen or laundry room.

      • JacobCoffinWritesOP
        2·
        10 months ago

        This is really interesting, I’ve got some mushroom cultivation to read about! Cold and damp is an interesting feature set to look for in part of a building - damp is usually a bad deal for buildings around here (lots of wood and sheetrock). In places that could use quanats and wind towers for cooling, that might be a good fit? Or I wonder if it could be paired with a greenhouse as they’re also damp, and cooling one space could warm the other with waste heat? Probably wouldn’t need both at once though, so that might be out.