Kitchens are shared spaces of encounter. They embrace social differences, and facilitate the circulation of ideas, and practices of care, empathy and hospitality. Throughout history, kitchens have been the subject of designers, architects and artists’s work, engaged in ideas surrounding the value, production and distribution of food and the socio-political aspects of cooking and dining. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s design for the Frankfurt Kitchen (1926) introduced efficiency to domestic labour; Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975) is a feminist performance parody of television cooking demonstrations, where kitchen tools become alphabetised and gestures indicate rage and oppression; Carol Goodden, Tina Girouard and Gordon Matta-Clark’s conceptual restaurant FOOD (1972) was a space of encounter for local communities in a gentrifying New York City. More recently, Michael Rakowitz bridged connections between hostility and hospitality in his Enemy Kitchen (2003); while Anna Puigjaner’s Kitchenless Cities (2016) offered a new typology for organising and distributing domestic spaces. In 2020, the Istanbul Design Biennial re-frames the kitchen as a space that is central to design thinking and production, reflecting the specific ecological, economical and geopolitical contexts of today and in years to come.

Spirited Away is probably Miyazaki’s most famous movie. It follows a young girl named Chihiro as she works in a spa for spirits in order to save her parents, who have been turned into pigs for eating food meant for the spirits (without even paying…). Food is a central theme to this movie. It is the smell of a mouthwatering feast that lures her parents into the spirit world, and No-face, one of the main antagonists of the movie, embodies a never-ending gluttony. But even as food and the insatiability surrounding it represent the darker side of the movie, food — not feasts — represent acts of kindness and healing. Feeding others, when done on a personal level (as opposed to the large meals prepared by hired cooks in the spa), is a profound moment when bonds are made and altruism shines. A few characters take on these exchanges, but what always strikes me the most is one of the parting scenes.

At the end of the movie, Chihiro makes one final journey in order to rescue her new friend Haku. To save Haku, Chihiro must return an important piece of magic to the potentially dangerous but assuredly very powerful witch Zeniba, twin to the horrendously violent and greedy Yubaba. She takes this journey with No-face, a primary antagonist of the film who is notoriously disturbing.

When the characters arrive at Zeniba’s dwelling, we are surprised to find that it is a simple and homey cottage — hardly what we would expect from one witch so notorious. The cottage is a sanctuary: they eat cake, drink tea, knit, and spin yarn. These seemingly unimpressive tasks are given a lot of weight given that Zeniba and No-face participate in these activities with care and attention. This serves to once again upend our expectations that the domestic is meant for those who are powerless, and thus have nothing else to offer.

When Chihiro is about to leave Zeniba’s cottage, she is given a parting gift: a hair tie. Seemingly innocuous, Zeniba tells her, “It will protect you — it’s made from the threads your friends wove together.”