Housing has always been a significant issue in metropolises. It accommodates the city's population and can impact other urban concerns, such as the necessary commute between home and work or school.
Broadly, urban densification enjoys widespread acceptance in urban planning. In today's context, the correlation between densification and housing is addressed by designing high-rise buildings with smaller floor areas. This approach yields apartments with minimal functionalities, known in Brazil as kitchenettes. As with any architectural type, these compact residences have advantages and disadvantages, serving either as a model of efficiency or as an illustration of housing instability.
The kitchenette represents a contemporary housing concept with a relatively recent emergence, tracing its origins to the early 20th century. The rapid urban expansion during the industrialization era led to an influx of rural migrants, making it necessary to provide them with housing. Concurrently, the modernist movement was gaining ground, seeking to harmonize architectural techniques with a novel lifestyle concept and perceived societal well-being. The challenges linked to modernist aspirations are significant, and the outcomes remain debatable. Nevertheless, at the heart of modernist ideology was the utilization of urban vertical growth and mechanization to streamline work and residential aspects despite the substantial issues associated with their execution.
In the United States, cities began to modify existing buildings to accommodate more families in the 1930s. Conventional houses were internally partitioned, resembling boarding houses, and hotels changed their layout to operate as condominiums. The term "Quitinete" (or "kitnet") is a derivation of the English word "kitchenette," essentially signifying a "small kitchen." It was used to describe the spatial arrangement of this novel type of dwelling: a combined bedroom and living room, optionally integrated, alongside a compact kitchen. During that era, bathrooms might have been shared among multiple units. Presently, however, these bathrooms are private and naturally smaller.
The reduction of the kitchen was also explored and tested in Germany. Ernst May was Frankfurt’s municipal architect. His work involved economical and efficient solutions in his housing plan, both in design and construction. This approach reinforced the concept of "Existenzminimum" (minimum existence) and standardization of housing complexes, a recurring theme for Germans involved in CIAMs. The intended efficiency explored mechanisms such as built-in storage, folding beds, and the most complete "prototype" of this research: the Frankfurter Küche (Frankfurt kitchen), designed by architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, inspired by 19th-century American literature.
These reductions primarily targeted the middle and lower classes in early 20th-century cities. Despite the Modernist movement's endorsement of reductions (paired with automation) to enhance everyday convenience and societal liberation, property owners capitalized on the opportunity for increased occupancy per square meter. This shift yielded predictable yet distressing outcomes. Notably, in Chicago around the 1920s, kitchenettes were predominantly inhabited by the Black population, exacerbating racial segregation between the city's northern and southern regions. This division persists today, albeit in a subtler form. These compact dwellings accommodated not only newlyweds but also entire families within minimal floor areas, a scene still familiar in large cities today. This phenomenon was captured in the writings of poet Gwendolyn Brooks during that period.
While moving away from extreme occupancy situations, the emergence of kitchenettes represents a new way of living and inhabiting industrial metropolises, where services and leisure activities "free" residences from certain functions and rooms. If the city provides amenities like laundry, restaurants, parks, and nightclubs, the residences may not need to include features like game rooms, utility areas, and spacious kitchens. As in Europe and the United States, the proliferation of kitchenettes occurred in Brazil around 1940. The real estate market began to contemplate more possibilities for buying and selling, and once again, kitchenettes offered more housing units per urban land area.
Despite the dubious motives of the market, it remains a reality that kitchenettes provide a condensed environment suitable for a distinctly urban or even minimalist way of life, contingent upon the circumstances. The limited floor space does not hinder appropriate, efficient, and comfortable projects. A prominent illustration of this can be observed in São Paulo through the Atlanta Building, an architectural creation by Franz Heep. This innovative architect introduced German rationalist principles to Brazil, with the kitchen potentially representing an adaptation of the Frankfurter Küche concept in the Brazilian context.
Compact spaces require a distinct design perspective. From an architectural standpoint, spatial limitations can foster inventive explorations that challenge, reinterpret, and broaden the roles of a dwelling beyond conventional norms. Kitchenettes are far from being a detrimental aspect of housing. They represent a housing type tailored to a specific demographic and their way of life, like students from distant areas, solo occupants uninterested in a full domestic setup, and even nomadic individuals. Consequently, their significance should not be overlooked.
Kitchenettes assert themselves as valid residences like any other within the city and cannot be rejected for its misuse. Those responsible for the properties — the government or construction and real estate companies — should be held accountable for providing housing compatible with the dignified quality of life that society deserves, like single-family houses, multi-family houses, high-rise buildings, or large, medium, and small apartments. After all, there are many ways to live. Kitchenettes represent one of them, within a diversity as vast as the city itself.
