Can Big Kitchens Be Green?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10. 3.07
Donald Chong: Small Fridges Make Good Cities
We have often stated that it is hard to call big houses green, but can big kitchens be considered green? We were asked by Kitchen and Bath Business Green- a trade publication serving "the business of building eco-friendly kitchens and baths" (there truly is a magazine for everything!) Read the edited version here or the full version below.
KBBGreen: Are big, open kitchen layouts environmentally friendly, and how so or how not?
LA: In an era of global warming and peak oil, we have to think about using fewer resources both in building and operating. Even the greenest of materials have embodied energy so the bigger a kitchen, the less environmentally friendly it is. The key to our future is to live with less, and the best way to live with less is to design things well.
Donald Chong kitchen: note that the sink and range for this entire kitchen is a free-standing Buthaup "kitchen workbench" at the end instead of the usual monster Viking or Aga.
KBBGreen: Do they cost more to heat or cool? Does heat from cooking raise temperatures in other rooms of the house because there aren't walls to contain it?
LA: The bigger a room, the more it costs to heat or cool. However the biggest problem is that big kitchens seem to always get big appliances; in the upscale kitchen everyone wants the big honking commercial ranges with 20,000 BTU burners, salamanders and professional exhaust systems to cope with it. And fridges that can hold two weeks worth of food. The nicest kitchen I ever saw (very big and open) was by Donald Chong in Toronto, who says "small fridges make good cities"
Donald Chong Kitchen: Lots of room for preserves
KBBGreen: If green, how can designers market this to clients?
LA: Local food, fresh ingredients, the slow food movement; these are all the rage these days. A green kitchen will have big work areas and sinks for preserving, tons of storage to keep it in, but will not have a four foot wide fridge or a six burner Viking range. It will open to outdoors to vent the heat in summer, to the rest of the house to retain the heat in winter. The dining area will be integrated into it, perhaps right in the middle. A green kitchen will be like grandma's farm kitchen- big, open, the focus of the house and no energy from the appliances will be wasted in winter or kept inside in summer.
KBBGreen: If not green, how can you make open kitchens green without sacrificing design and style? (Radiant heat flooring? Vent systems?)
LA: There is nothing inherently "not green" about a big open kitchen, if it is not filled with monster appliances, formaldehyde and vinyl. If it is where you live and not repeated with accessory breakfast rooms and empty dining rooms, it probably can and should be the biggest room in the house. ::K+BBB Green
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- How to Go Green: Cocktails
- Recycled Cardboard Accessories by Diseno Cartonero
- Little Portland Cottages Built from "Found Objects"
- Kitchen of Tomorrow from 1943
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I'm glad that he opted to clarify there. Few people need six-burner stoves or large refrigerators, but large amounts of working space are essential. Over at Greentime, ever since our third experiment where we began cooking with more bulk goods, we have suffered from a lack of working space. All those jars to store enough dry goods to cover our food prep needs, for example, take up space in an already small kitchen. We barely have enough counter space to bake bread, let alone prepare something like a fresh pasta dinner.
Kitchens with good working space do drive their owners to use them. I've seen it several times before. Getting people back into their kitchens and out of restaurants encourages "slow food" and local eating, as well as a proper engagement with food that leads to people considering the social and environmental costs of their food.
So, it's not the open kitchen. It's the giant appliances that are the problem.
If you used your kitchen for more than just eating, a big open kitchen could be environmentally friendly. Say you skipped out on a dining room, had a smaller living room (since most of us spend more time in the kitchen anyways) but compensated by a big open kitchen.
Thanks so much for posting this. We didn't expect it, and we were happy to see ourselves mentioned on Treehugger. Just to clarify, Kitchen and Bath Business is a print trade magazine for designers, architects, etc. KBBgreen.com is a blog we launched recently for home owners and trades people looking to find out more about building eco-friendly kitchens and baths because we get asked about it all the time. I hope this helps and thanks for linking to us.
I appreciate the "not repeated" part. A big kitchen should be the place for food: both preparing and enjoying. Let the wafting scents of delicious dinners draw you into a sensually fulfilling environment: see the bright colors inherent to healthy/tasty food, smell the aromas that hint flavors that are then tasted, and finally listen to (and join in) great dinner conversation and/or great background music.
Who needs a dining room if you have a big enough kitchen? Taking this a step further, why do so many people in the US try to have a "family room" as well as a "living room?" I never understood the difference: most of the households I know with both live mostly in the family room. The "living" room is then left to be dead, purely decorative space.
We're remodeling our 9 X 9 urban kitchen in San Francisco, and the watchwords are "Go 24". Small, efficient European kitchens work splendidly, are affordable and use less energy.
* A very tall, Dutch-made 24" X 24" refrigerator uses less energy than the best US EnergyStar appliance
* 24" French induction cooktop with four burners uses 25% less energy than radiant ceramic models.
* 24" Spanish convection oven will handle all but the biggest hormone-pumped turkeys (this year, three game hens instead!)
* Take your pick from several quiet, water-saving dishwashers.
* Even a hood can mean more cabinet space: A cylindrical Italian wall mounted model, only 14" in diameter.
Of course a big kitchen can be Green, and I especially liked the comments about room to store and room to work. That's the way mine is because I love to cook and would rather not eat out.
But I'm not a big fan of going to the grocery store every 3 days, and I save more gas than it costs to run my big fridge by miles. They don't miss me at the local market, it's too crowded anyway.
And I loved the comment above about "living rooms" because my house came with one and after ten years I still don't know what it's for.
Great to see this article- I've been working for 2 years to produce eco kitchens which are sustainable yet contemporary - I'd add to this article 2 other areas for attention- proper provision within the kitchen for sorting and storing ( and composting) waste and INDUCTION HOBS! less energy- faster cooking times- less radiant heat- fewer cleaning products and water needed to clean - but all the control of gas - just need to buy your electricity from a sustainable source!
I think the most important thing about big kitchens is that they do very quickly become the centre of the home.
My mum's kitchen at one point had a sofa along one wall. It ended up pretty much replacing the lounge for entertaining/socialising/just general living.
Plus at this time of year, a bunch of heat-generating appliances are best kept in a room that people hang out in.
we have just gone down the new kitchen route. not in the greenest way, but in the best we can do. (wok tops from recycled sources), the thing that disgusted me was the attitude of the sales people to replacing perfectly good equipment.
we wanted to keep our small fridge and freezer but we told by several companies that we should throw them out and get new "fitted" ones, even though ours are only 12 months old.
the rest of the stuff, table from a charity shop (a nice 50 year old oak number), chairs from my gran (very old and reupholstered with old velvet curtains) and we grow as much fresh stuff as we can, it doesn't need refrigerating then!
Beautiful responses, Lloyd.