by Sarah Inassari | 01 Juni 2018

In a house, kitchen is the core or centered place where food production activities happens. Foodstuffs are imported, processed into food to be served so that the positioning of the kitchen in a house plan must be able to provide the residents with access and movement. But simultaneously, the production process in the kitchen produces waste that creates a dirty impression, so that paradoxically the kitchen should not be seen directly by people. The more usage of it in a Kampung environment that is not fenced, the layout of the kitchen adjacent to the neighboring kitchen becomes a place to visit to freely exchange information between housewives without having to go through the main door and unwittingly deactivate the living room.

Like the kitchen, the city also processes food for its inhabitants and has efficiency demands in terms of distribution to reduce energy waste. In global relations, cities are open to become a node of meetings of various types of food from various regions that open opportunities for information and cultural exchange. In addition to producing and distributing food, the city also produces waste residues that often do not undergo a recycling process and further add to the environmental burden after the production process takes a lot of water from the soil and the distribution process releases carbon into the air we breathe everyday. In addition to plastic packaging, food waste is also produced every day by individuals and groups such as restaurants and households so it must end in vain being thrown into a garbage disposal center even though food waste is more dangerous because it produces methane gas as a contributor to the greenhouse effect compared to other types of waste.

We must knew that every single day our nature is exploited but not balanced with equivalent conservation efforts. Environmental damage is widely discussed but cannot be viewed partially only as a direct impact of industrial and development activities alone because it also questions how socially and economically the city has been transformed from agricultural activities but relies on other regions to supply food. Subsistence agricultural practices that are quite time-consuming cannot catch up with the fast-paced demands of the city’s work rhythm and no longer based on prey institutions, giving birth to modern shopping facilities, restaurants, fast food restaurants and technology-based messaging services. The dependence of the city on the practice of subsistence farming, which means to release it from the practice of natural reading, merges into the household scale where we rarely find yards in each housing unit. Especially with market trends offering lifestyle, eating is no longer considered a survival practice but also a matter of recognition of social class which often leads to the elimination of local food and unconsciously contributes to the distance between food and nature as the source.

The decline in the quality of the environment that occurs from pollution, floods as well as a reduction in planting land that has an impact on food problems has been widely responded to by various programs including the conservation path, but in reality environmental problems are still emerging and human perspective on nature as the most the base is rarely evaluated. If this is returned to the kitchen, where natural foods and those that have been processed meet, where menu choices and processing methods are decided, there we have the opportunity to reflect on the concept of our relationship with nature that has been going on so far. Whether nature is our consideration in every process of choosing food ingredients, cooking, consuming, and addressing the waste produced. Also applies to cities, where formalities and informality meet, where the way of managing space and resources is decided, there we can question again what considerations have been used in operating the city and then look for new alternatives that are in line with the dynamics of the problems in inside.