Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: open kitchens

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

"Laura Fitch, A.I.A." <lfitch [at] krausfitch.com>
is the author of the message below. 
It was posted by Fred the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org> 
because the message included a 1.4 Megabyte image (of kitchen?)
That image is not included (or mentioned?) below.  Laura, is it on the web
somewhere? 
--------------------  FORWARDED MESSAGE FOLLOWS --------------------

>
>I have to admit, I'm completely puzzled by the people who have the kitchens
>closed off, or want them to be. It seems like they have poor sound design,
>rather than too noisy a kitchen. But I guess that's one of those things you
>need to see to really understand.
>
I don't think this has much to do with poor sound design.  As I have 
already stated, I think it has a lot to do with community size.  

With 32 units and 5 rentals our common house is used more nights a week 
than not for events other than common dining.  Many of these events take 
place just after dinner (i.e. during clean-up).  Most of these uses are 
completely compatible with an open kitchen, and so we usually leave the 
8' wide by 4' high pass-thru, door, and dish return windows fully open. 
 There is a good sense of openness between kitchen and dining (I have 
attached a photo, but I don't know if these go through the listserve!). 
 But in our case, with so many, diverse uses going on simultaneously, it 
has really been nice to be able to close the shutters between the two.

Let's see, last night we had our weekly dance classes from 5: 30 - 9:30 
pm in the Great room - with 20 plus dancers including non-residents. 
 Then there are birthday parties, family reunions, office parties, 
school class parties, soccer parties, office meetings, political 
meetings, men's resource center meetings, book groups, juggling parties, 
drumming classes, community meetings, etc. etc.  

We used to complain that our common house was always empty - I haven't 
heard that complaint in years!   I have never in eight years heard 
someone who actually lived in our community say "hey wouldn't it be much 
nicer if our kitchen were open".  I have heard folks who visited say 
things like "I think the open kitchen at island cohousing is much 
nicer".  Yes, it is fabulous - but yes, they only have 24 units.  I 
believe that is a fundamental difference.

-- 
Laura Fitch, A.I.A.
Principal Architect

KRAUS-FITCH ARCHITECTS, INC.
110 Pulpit Hill Rd.
Amherst, MA  01002
413-549-5799
413-549-7918 (fax)

lfitch [at] krausfitch.com




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