We are in Barcelona. Our directors’ meeting will take place here tomorrow. But we came yesterday because we presented our book ‘Happiness and Domestic Life‘ at the 10th International Congress on Work and Family organised every two years by the ICWF of the IESE Business School.
Researchers from all over the world discussing work, telework, the advantages, the disadvantages, the apparent progress and recommendations for companies. Really enriching to attend forums like this. In the ‘Authors meet Readers’ session Stephen Davies, one of the authors of our recent publication, gave a historical overview of how houses have been and are built according to how people should live. This has a social-economic, but also an ideological component that sometimes swallows up the natural development of the family and the home.
In fact, as Davies explained in her chapter, at a certain point in history, feminist movements have been influential in taking kitchens out of the home when the kitchen has been and will be the place around which crucial family conversations take place before, during or after the preparation of a meal.
If you Google “home and kitchen”, the results are surprising, with the kitchen receiving high praise. The kitchen is considered one of the most important parts of the home: it is a driving force, a hub, a meeting place, a space for creation and experimentation. It is not just a place for storage, it is meant to be a welcoming environment, a meeting place, where people want to be.
And I have to say that in our house in Brussels, where the kitchen was integrated with the living room, we often received friends in the kitchen. Not intentionally, but naturally, they would arrive, and the snacking would take place around the kitchen, while we all finished setting the table or finishing off the last dishes. A generation not necessarily used to cooking elaborate menus on a day-to-day basis, but who continue to give importance to “receiving” so that people feel at home. I remember that in pandemics, the competition was to make croquettes, lentils or Spanish omelettes like our mothers or grandmothers…
It is a good sign that the kitchen is the heart of the home, where everyone collaborates, where everyone feels at ease and where there is room for conversation while working, because this will allow for more natural family relationships, where housework is also present and valued through the spaces, which also have to be thought out and designed so that they take on a leading role.
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