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There are a number of topics I don't research systematically but that come up regularly during my readings. I am trying a new post category, for now called Bites of Reading. These posts collects quotes or excerpts from different sources about a particular topic. The kitchen as a space for learning"A discourse of purity had underpinned the opening of Freidrich Accum's 1821 Culinary Chemistry, which convinced readers that by preparing meals they were already chemists: 'the art of preparing good and wholesome food is, undoubtedly, a branch of chemistry; the kitchen is a chemical laboratory'. As with the earlier 'tea lecture', the identification of cookery and chemistry was just the beginning of the educational process: extending one's knowledge through learning more precise details about these connections would provide an enhanced perspective on the world, as well as sparing waste and labour, and providing more nutritious food."- Melanie Keene, Object lessons: sensory science education 1830-1870, p.115The kitchen as a space of labor"Il s'agit donc sans doute, à travers la création d'un enseignement ménager, de faire concurrence aux offres de travail à l'usine, tant pour les esclaves nouvellement affranchies que pour les femmes des classes populaires. Le travail domestique est alors "valorisé" en étant assimilé à celui d'un ouvrier : en le mécanisant, en le standardisant, en en définissant précisément les règles et les horaires, en le séparant du lieu de résidence."- Catherine Clarisse, Cuisine: Recettes d'architecture, p.37. About the separation of the kitchen from the living areas in the XIXth century, and then the disparition of the table and chairs in the XXth century. The status and visibility of domestic work changed during the  twentieth century. The mechanization of domestic tasks, whereby  the middle classes replaced servants and the working classes considerably reduced heavy labour, made domestic work more respectable. The kitchen is compared to a science laboratory and kitchen equipment has become something to show off. - Matrix, Making Space: Women and the Environment, p.56THE KITCHEN AS A SPACE designed by women"[Gilbreth] began to think about areas of industry in which being a woman and a mother might be an asset rather than a liability. […] Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey write of their mother: “If the only way to enter a man’s field was through the kitchen door, that’s the way she’d enter … Mother planned, on paper, an efficiency-type kitchenette of the kind used today in good many apartments. Under her arrangement, a person could mix a cake, put it in the oven, and do the dishes, without taking more than a couple dozen steps.” […] Though her biographer Jane Lancaster points out that Gilbreth seemed little interested in getting other women out of the kitchen, when her daughter Ernestine married Charles Everett Carey in 1930 and asked her mother for aa kitchen design as a wedding present, Lillian created one she branded the Teamwork Kitchen, with a butcher’s apron for Carey and cupboards engineered for his greater-than-six-foot height. Gilbreth saw an opportunity where others did not, turning sexism to her advantage. Even while Frank was alive the Gilbreth had seen the home as a site of labor, and they applied four critical eyes to repetitive everyday tasks […] [but] it wasn’t until Lillian was faced with the possibility of a world without work outside the home that she turned her research within those walls-and designed her own escape hatch."- Alexandra Lange, The Design of Childhood, introduction"Un tel sujet de recherche me donna tout d'abord le sentiment d'être "renvoyée aux fourneaux". Ma formation d'architecte me faisait assimiler une étude de cuisines à une analyse ergonomique et fonctionnelle des lieux, et il me semblait que tout avait été fait à ce sujet depuis longtemps."- Catherine Clarisse, Cuisine: Recettes d'architecture, p.16Le Corbusier wantED women in the kitchen, because it makes their husbands happy"La femme sera heureuse si son mari est heureux. Le sourire des femmes est le don des dieux. Et une cuisine bien faite vaut la paix au foyer. Alors faites de votre cuisine le lieu du sourire féminin ! Et que ce sourire rayonne de la cuisine sur l'homme et les enfants présents autour de ce sourire."- Le Corbusier, Poser la question de l'habitat moderne c'est poser le problème de l'art de vivre aujourd'hui. Document préparatoire au CIAM 9 d'Aix en Provence, destiné à présenter l'Unité d'habitation de Marseille, écrit à Chandigarh en mai 1953. Cité par Catherine Clarisse in Cuisine: Recettes d'architecture, p.18The accessible kitchenIn 1948, Lilian Gilbreth presents the Heart Kitchen, designed to be accessible to women with heart disease. The model was subsequently exhibited at the Rusk Institute. A history recounted by Barbara Penner and by Bess Williamson in Accessible America (2016).The kitchen of the future"The ‘house of tomorrow' is a vision perpetually deferred and one that tells us more about the preoccupations of the time than it does about the designs of the future."- Genevieve Bell and Jofish Kaye, Designing technology for domestic spaces: A Kitchen Manifesto