The Household of Industrial Unit

At the beginning of the industrial era, the kitchen developed by imitating processes developed in factories to deal with household tasks. The transfer of operating methods borrowed from the "scientific organisation of work" (devised by Frederick W. Taylor with a view to making assembly-line working more productive) has gradually shaped what has become the modern kitchen. Domestic production lines consisting of an organised succession of tools (vertical cooking, vacuum packing, juice extraction, yoghurt makers, accelerated cooking) today allow the user to become an expert in the art of industrially producing his or her daily meals.

A series of domestic and industrial objects illustrate this hybridisation and underline the still gendered and unequal representation of domestic tasks, for example making hi-tech a strategy of desirability in the kitchen. This introduction to the question of shifting work paradigms reminds us that work remains an issue closely bound up with the home environment and raises some initial questions about the family unit itself.

Curator : Cité du design - Pôle recherche (sous la direction d’Olivier Peyricot, avec Jennifer Rudkin, Tiphaine Kazi-Tani, Léo-Pol Martin) avec/with Marie Lechner
Scenography : g.u.i (Nicolas Couturier, Benoît Verjat et Cyril A. Magnier)
Site : Bâtiment H - Site Cité du design

3 Rue Javelin Pagnon 42000 Saint-Étienne