The Kitchen: Where Function Meets Pleasure traces the cultural and societal history of the kitchen through its most emblematic objects, arguing that this supposedly mundane room is a mirror of how domestic life, labour, and pleasure have been organised and contested across time.
About This Book
The kitchen is rarely treated as a site of serious design inquiry — yet few spaces in the home carry as much ideological weight. In this compact but substantive volume, Jolanthe Kugler reads kitchen objects not as neutral tools but as evidence of shifting social relations, gender roles, and cultural values. Part of the Raddar series — a design research imprint launched by mudac, the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts in Lausanne — the book operates between scholarly analysis and provocation, bringing an art-historical lens to a space that design discourse has too often left to lifestyle publishing. Essential reading for those interested in the material culture of everyday life.
Key Features
- 128 pages of design history and cultural analysis centred on kitchen objects and domestic space
- Written by Jolanthe Kugler, curator, urban planner, and art historian
- Part of the Raddar design research series, launched by mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts, Lausanne)
- Published by Les Presses du Réel
What You'll Discover
- How emblematic kitchen objects encode the historical and societal values of their era, revealing more than their function suggests
- The way representations of the kitchen have evolved — and what those shifts tell us about domestic ideology and design culture
- A methodology for reading everyday design objects as concrete cases within a broader reflection on the living environment
- The Raddar series' distinctive mode: scholarly yet disruptive, using specific objects to reframe design's role in contemporary culture
About the Author
Jolanthe Kugler is a curator, urban planner, and art historian whose work addresses design through its social and cultural uses. Her research engages with the living environment and the material history embedded in everyday objects.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 128
- Dimensions: 12 x 19 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9782378965785
- Publisher: Les Presses du Réel
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Designers, architects, and cultural theorists interested in the material history of domestic space; academics working in design studies, material culture, or gender and the home.