I’m sketching another photobash, this time a scene of a solarpunk kitchen, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss an opportunity to include something cool.

My current plan is for this one to be a kind of summer kitchen (like old farmhouses around here used to have) which doubles as a three season porch. I think a lot of the elements could fit a normal kitchen, but some will compliment each other well with this design so it might be a good place to start (and it fits my theme of reexamining older ways of doing things for opportunities to reuse).

My current list of elements:

  • a Tamara Solar Kitchen -style oven cooker

  • A glass wall (and bit of roof) for growing plants and overwintering sensitive fruit trees

  • A solar hot water rig on the roof

  • Some sort of plan for compost (currently just a resealable bucket on a counter, but for those of you who know more about composting, I’m happy to build in your dream system)

  • A sitting area since people always hang out in the kitchen while you’re cooking anyways.

  • Maybe a parabolic grill set up outside, we’ll see if that feels redundant.

I feel like I’m missing a bunch of opportunities, so if you have any ideas, now’s a great time to add stuff

  • meyotch@slrpnk.net
    10·
    10 months ago

    Lovely ideas.

    As a start, I’d like to see fewer but more repairable appliances. The technology of the toaster hasn’t changed since my grandparents were setting up their first kitchen. One of the grandkids should have received that toaster as an inheritance.

    We treat the wrong things as disposable.

    • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
      6·
      10 months ago

      Very much agreed! There’s a great section in Ecotopia about their appliances being uglier than American ones, but way more repairable, using common, compatible parts and simple construction. They didn’t allow products to go to market unless a volunteer committee of regular people with common tools were able to fix the most likely issues. I think a lot about how different the power tools I’ve inherited from my grandfather (with their external, standard-dimension motors and fairly open frames), are from say our washer and dryer, where everything is packed tightly into a sleek-looking shell. If my drill press motor ever goes, I can replace it with one from any local hardware store - if something goes wrong with my dryer, it’ll take a lot more research, careful disassembly, and I might need to call a specialist. Same for small appliances - why is there a Printed Circuit Board in my blender, which works exactly as well as my grandmother’s blender from the 1960s, which I could fix with patience, a soldering iron, and a multimeter?

      I’ll have to look at older appliance catalogues and see if I can find any designs that make repairability visually clear - thanks!

  • cerement@slrpnk.net
    8·
    10 months ago
    • icebox
    • root cellar
    • in a solarpunk future, we would’ve switched from supermarkets back to markets – more focus on freshness than shelf-life, you only buy what you need for meals for that day, less focus on long term storage (preservation over refrigeration)
    • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      10 months ago

      A root cellar is a great fit for the design I’m thinking of - if we’re already building an addition for this summer kitchen, the space underneath is a great spot for a root cellar!

      I’d been wondering if an icebox is reaching back too far or too much of a stretch for modern audiences - I grew up listening to stories from my grandparents about harvesting ice in the winters (the winter crop) and storing it under sawdust (and getting in trouble for hiding in the ice house on hot days). I also got to help with an ice harvest recreation at a farm museum for a few years. I’m fond of the concept but wonder if easier technologies can be done ‘greenly’ enough that people wouldn’t see it as a worthwhile alternative (whether that’s PV panels and a battery powering a chest freezer (or chest fridge) or perhaps something like RoboGroMo’s idea to replace the propane heat component of an RV fridge with a solar concentrator. Like I’ve mentioned, I like reexamining older technologies to see if they’d be a good fit for a society with different priorities, modern technology to augment it, and possibly fewer resources overall. If it seems practical enough I’m happy to include it!

      I can see the emphasis on local food, and shorter distances enabling more frequent trips to a market (while at the same time preserving more food in alternative ways) though I’m not sure yet how to show it in the same scene. Thanks for your suggestions!

  • schmorp@slrpnk.netEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    • Human powered kitchen appliance

    • How do we keep food cold? If we don’t want to run freezers (high energy use!) we have to get our canning and curing game in order.

    As you mention, the Tamera kitchen is more of a summer kitchen thing. Portuguese summers can be nasty wet and cold. In Tamera they seem to have solved this by going more private in winter and retreating to their smaller private spaces. This seasonality is something I also discover in my own recreating of small-scale farming, and it will influence my appetite, working hours, choice of activities - so I’d say (the rediscovery of) seasonality is a central part of solarpunk. With seasonality comes greater sustainability. Summer vs. winter houses or even villages were a thing in many cultures.

    • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
      3·
      10 months ago

      Thanks! Those pedal powered designs actually seem pretty practical! They remind me of a grinding wheel my dad used to use to sharpen knives and axes - I was always amazed at how well it worked for the minimal effort of the pedal.

      Thank you for giving me the right words to describe seasonality! - and the scope of impacts on your life. I’ve been thinking that a properly solarpunk society is going to have a lot of cultural differences from modern life, originally I’d been thinking mostly a different pace, with less desperate urgency in all tasks, less emphasis on always finding another way to make money because money means safety and stability and basic dignity. But I think it’d probably be a lot more than that, and I think adjusting our lives to the seasons (where applicable) would be a big part of that - and part of what would make solarpunk cultures extremely varied and unique to their immediate surroundings. Wonderful world building potential in seeing how location, weather, and the existing resources, like infrastructure, technology, and reusable parts, shape each community.

      • schmorp@slrpnk.netEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        Wonderful world building potential in seeing how location, weather, and the existing resources, like infrastructure, technology, and reusable parts, shape each community.

        I’m surprised at how exciting I find it to treat my good old ‘hippie freak life’ not only from a real-world but also from a world-building perspective. I am currently trying to get back to writing myself but still tend to sometimes fall back into regarding art as a kind of ‘second-rate activity’ when it’s actually central to life from an abundance perspective, and actually makes abundance possible. So picking up a pen, pencil, musical instrument after seeding, planting, harvesting and eating not as a frivolity, but as a much needed part of the equation. People want stories always, and we so urgently need to drown out the corporate narrative and the hero narrative, and it’s fun to create stuff.

        I appreciate that you are taking the time to collect ideas around the real-world stuff. It’s cruel to create a beautiful utopia and then the science doesn’t add up and everybody just gets free energy or wealth out of nowhere (a bit fake, like living in Norway or Switzerland maybe?)

        So please keep asking, and writing!

        • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
          3·
          10 months ago

          Thanks!! I figure solarpunk societies should be very consensus-driven, so these depictions of them should be too! Folks here have some awesome ideas! Plus it’ll hopefully be good discussions, and worldbuilding fodder

          Good luck with your writing! All my attempts at solarpunk come out a bit too postapocalyptic right now but I think I’m getting closer as I work on these pictures. I think we need more solutions-focussed scifi and art to help get people thinking about other ways life could be done. Seeing it demonstrated, even in fiction, really helps I think

          • schmorp@slrpnk.netEnglish
            4·
            10 months ago

            a bit too postapocalyptic right now

            Haha I have the same issue.

            Here’s one of the first limits of ‘everything has to be local’ I came up with in my somewhat too post-apocalyptic society, once we’re talking kitchen stuff: where do you get your salt from when you live inland?

    • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      10 months ago

      Very cool idea! That seems like an easy thing to add and fermented foods are a great addition. I also like the mushroom idea and will add it to my list for future scenes!

    • schmorp@slrpnk.netEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I’ve grown oysters in old milk packages, plenty of people grow them in plastic buckets. Any old trash container that can be filled with some organic matter as substrate will be fine.

      No need to be in the dark, but they don’t want full sun, and plenty of moisture. Some of the more heat resistant species could thrive in a greenhouse, but most mushrooms that are currently cultivated like colder temperatures. Maybe the modern solarpunk kitchen needs a cold wet chamber for certain processes?

      In my real life I haven’t found the ideal fruiting chamber yet. I would like to avoid spending the additional energy for a air humidifier and would hope to find some other process already happening. In world building this could be the moisture of a community kitchen or laundry room.

      • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
        2·
        10 months ago

        This is really interesting, I’ve got some mushroom cultivation to read about! Cold and damp is an interesting feature set to look for in part of a building - damp is usually a bad deal for buildings around here (lots of wood and sheetrock). In places that could use quanats and wind towers for cooling, that might be a good fit? Or I wonder if it could be paired with a greenhouse as they’re also damp, and cooling one space could warm the other with waste heat? Probably wouldn’t need both at once though, so that might be out.

    • JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.netOP
      2·
      10 months ago

      I think you’re going to like this design! I made the south wall and part of the roof kind of a greenhouse glass structure, lined with shelves of herbs! And some other plants. I think I’m getting near the end of this photobash - most of the big elements are in place, I’m mostly just hunting up all the kitchen clutter to fill the shelves and counters, and then I can start the details stage, where I make all the little tweaks and recoloring to geet the light right. I was hoping to finish today but it’ll probably be Monday