Indian Urban Kitchens: Space Analysis For Elderly Users Of Pune City, India

Abstract

The kitchen is an important area in the home serving both functional and social requirements. The kitchen environment needs to be usable and comfortable. The favorite place of most of women in their house is kitchen. Indian women spend about 3-4 hours a day in kitchen.  [1]

Thus the kitchen environment need to be designed well to support independent living for older people. Doing daily cooking related activities in Kitchen becomes a part of life for this elderly population of women in India and especially for home makers it also continues in their old age. Making the kitchen space accessible, comfortable for independent activities by these elderly women in urban context is important. In India, elderly population is growing and because of migration of younger generations to different locations, these people prefer to continue living independently in urban apartments. [3] With changing requirements and restricted physical abilities elderly Indian women still prefer to perform cooking related activities in their homes independently or with little help.

This paper aims at the study and analysis of kitchen space in urban homes and exploring ways to enable active ageing. The planning of the kitchen area in the house needs to be considered of prime importance in order to facilitate the carrying out of activity by reducing the effects of fatigue and accidents in the kitchen.

It is appropriate to regard the domestic kitchen used by an elderly woman as her workplace, requiring application of the ergonomics principles such as environmental conditions, equipment design and workplace layout as per her need. The purpose is to enable them to perform activities in the kitchen comfortably, safely and without assistance.

In this context, kitchen space was chosen as the area of study as it is the highest functional room in every house. And the ability to cook for self with ease and comfort forms an important part of independent living. The aim of this project is to study Indian domestic kitchens, mostly the modular kitchen segment in urban apartments, with respect to the aging population and come up with simple design interventions that can be easily adopted and implemented by this segment, in order to eliminate or reduce ergonomic risk factors.

This paper reports on the contemporary kitchen experience from an ergonomics perspective and identifies the problems faced. This study addresses the need to study modern urban modular Kitchen space and its functionality as per requirements of elderly women. It addresses the ergonomic considerations while designing kitchen space. A central aim of the study was to produce guidance for older women to help them perform kitchen tasks more easily and make adaptations to the modular kitchen to match their evolving needs.

The study is conducted by selecting Pune city as urban context and kitchen space users in apartments in multistoried building units by doing a qualitative research study by survey and using structured questionnaire and focused group interview. A method used to select sample is a non-probability quota sampling and 36 samples are selected. The respondents are of age group 55 to 85 and all are residing and using kitchen space for everyday cooking activities. The questionnaire survey is done and data is analyzed. At second stage scheduled interviews are conducted in the user’s environment and using interview technique field observations are noted. Both qualitative and quantitative data is analyzed and findings were noted. Design Guidelines are suggested using reference literature and standardized and established design solutions.