Blijkeuken

Blijkeuken is a housing project that establishes a community-based caring system by challenging the kitchen’s status as a place for domestic chores and therefore the existing construct of housing typology in Dutch society.

The project began with author’s personal experience of realizing the social impact of kitchen design in domestic realm. Beyond its meal preparing function, kitchen should become the pivot point that make social changes such as gender inequality and deal with the shift of living pattern after covid.

Furthermore, the housing crisis in Dutch cities calls for a new housing model that contains both economic and spatial strategies. Therefore, the non-profit-oriented tenure of cooperative housing and the building type “Fat Type” from the Swiss model were introduced into the Dutch urban context, in order to experiment with new housing typologies that promotes sharing and caring in community.

Blijkeuken positions kitchen as social space to create a coherent living environment from urban to household. From edible landscape to Urban Kitchens, from circulation core to collective kitchens, and from shared living rooms to dwelling units, the kitchens facilitate a communal, bottom-up welfare network.