Nanci Fairless Nicholson

Originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, Nanci is a research-led designer based in London, focused on questioning normate practices and power structures, and spanning gender roles, disability, and language. In turn, she creates possibilities that dissect the policed, prescriptive boundaries of traditional architecture and design.

This year, in ADS3, Nanci has utilised the kitchen as a site to engage with power and gender roles in relation to domestic objects and spaces, gendered craft, and the role of historical precedent within these. This resulted in a proposal for a network of community kitchens within a council block in London.

Separately, through her dissertation, she examined the insidious, monolithic language of institutional care systems, working through autotheory to explore the performative aspect of language, and its ability to provide care and violence in moments and spaces.

Last year, as part of ADS9, her proposal questioned the current individuality of allotment plots – with their assigned ownership, limited scale, and pre-determined usage - by creating shared spaces for multiple uses. Through the sequential development of a material transformation of the site, it proposed an architecture that merged into the landscape.

Nanci previously completed her undergraduate at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Her final project proposed an architecture that re-aligned circadian rhythms through the careful application of light and colour. After graduating from her BSc, she worked for an architectural practice in London for 2 years, where she continued to work part time whilst studying at the RCA.

tablecloth with historical kitchen precedent plans

Through exploring systems that blur the established limits between private and public, between family structures and domestic roles, between labour and housekeeping, and between female and male roles, the proposal promotes a non-gender related domestic space, and as such, proposes a different kind of social kitchen and table typology.

The crimes of passion of the 19th century, in which a husband could legally kill his wife’s seducer, are an act of precedent that reflects society’s idealised version of womanhood and commonly featured the classically gendered spaces of the kitchen and dining room, with the kitchen as a polluted and abject space, allowing conversations that occur during domestic work. The violence within these acts of passion can be transferred to the inherent violence of the architecture of the kitchen, from the focus on the individual family unit, to the confining of the housewife to one space through efficiency and labour-saving devices.

Community kitchens become an integral part of a reimagining of domestic space, enabling spaces of care and blurring the boundaries between public and private. The proposal traverses this boundary, altering the existing, solely private kitchen typology to fit with a way of shared living through the provision of a network of different scales of kitchen.

laying the table / proposal

Anna Puigjaner’s research on kitchen-less cities confirms the heteropatriarchal conservatism that is still attached to the kitchen, helping to identify the power structures and acts of care within the domestic space.

However, there is the possibility of the kitchen to play a meaningful role in the development of the public sphere, by taking the kitchen out of the traditional domestic environment, or in this case, subverting or displacing its usual contents.

To apply this understanding, I have chosen an existing council estate as the site. In central/east London, it was built in the 1950s by Joseph Emberton, and was the first high rise built by a local authority, therefore being an ideal site for the proposal of a new kitchen typology.

Through an activation of the research material, mainly historical kitchen precedent plans, community kitchens become an integral part of this reimagining of domestic space, enabling spaces of care, and displacing the existing private kitchen.

The proposal provides the high rise council flat with 4 kitchen models of varying scales – the private micro-kitchen, garden oven kitchen, communal doma situated in the existing core, and seasonal rooftop kitchen - the combination of which subverts the current existing kitchen typology. The individual kitchens are connected by a unit that can be wheeled throughout and brought to each space, allowing connections and movement of people and food.

historical precedent studies

The assumed capabilities and realms of women are reflected in historical architectural precedents which show the scale and position of the kitchen within the home fluctuating as gender roles, labour and efficiency are redistributed and reimagined.

The violence within the acts of the 'crimes of passion' can be transferred to the inherent violence, or failures, of the architecture of the kitchen, from the focus on the individual family unit, to the confining of the housewife to one space through efficiency and labour-saving devices, as shown in these precedent studies.

They study the historical architectural precedents that preceded, and then informed, the council flat kitchen typology, highlighting the successes and failures of each precedent. Chronologically, these span from the times of the crimes of passion with precedents such as Catharine Beecher's 'American Woman's Home' and the 'Frankfurt Kitchen' , to current day with the IKEA modular kitchen.

detail plans

Through an activation of the research material and historical precedent studies, community kitchens become an integral part of this reimagining of domestic space, enabling spaces of care, and displacing the existing private kitchen.

This is shown in the plans for the 1 bed, 2 bed, and 3 bed apartments, as well as the communal doma kitchen situated outside the central core of each block.

woodwork / craft

These spaces typically feature crafted objects and materials - from table cloths, to wood worked bowls and tables, the history of which exposes the gendered crafting and assumed abilities and realms of women.

These bowls were produced as a way to visualise the crimes of passion, with increasing numbers of dips and the addition of hand carvings to signify and make visible the layers of crimes that constitute unwritten precedent as a form of law. Made from a reappropriated used solid American oak kitchen counter, the choice of materiality is enveloped by its past, present and future uses, the method of making and their status within the home.

Whilst it is classically viewed as male dominated, women were a large part of the wood-turning craft. This was however due to it being seen as more of a decorative rather than structural component. The choice to create objects using the male-dominated wood workshop, and the craft of wood turning, was influenced by this gendered history of the craft in western society.

kitchen counter table

Viewing these objects as interventions that blur the boundaries between the kitchen and the dining room, led to a proposal that continues to blur these boundaries.

The design of a modular kitchen counter unit that can be reassembled into a low table, allows the kitchen to be taken out of the private realm and into the public, combining 1:1 studies and the woodwork craft to create an object for collective cooking and the sharing of knowledge, stories, and food.

The design is born from the studies and research of the role, design and political impact of the kitchen throughout history, as well as past and current collective and shared modes of domestic spaces.

Nanci Fairless Nicholson

laying the table / proposal

historical precedent studies

detail plans

woodwork / craft

kitchen counter table

Social

About

Royal College of Art