The problem involved in this thesis is to examine the organization, administration, and equipment of the school kitchens, and point out certain educational values derived from such a project.

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Diploma thesis is focused on the design of restaurant's air-condition system for 60 persons as well as air-condition system for adjacent kitchen. The work consists of an introduction to the problematic of air-condition systems and its arrangement in the project. Diploma thesis consists of two parts - computational and design. Computational part includes computations of a quantity of an aeration air, calculation of thermal losses, stress and psychrometric evaluation of operation during summer and winter. Design part consists of designing of location and slot diffuser dimensioning, design of air conduct paths, its dimensioning and calculation of pressure losses. This work also includes designing of ventilation of machine-room, selection of air-condition units and its measurement and regulation. Drawing documentation and material specifications are also part of this diploma thesis.

Arbetet syftar till att undersöka behovet av att se över köksbänkars- och överskåps standardmått. De standardmått som finns idag är baserade på forskning som genomfördes på endast kvinnor som köksbrukare år 1948 av Hemmets forskningsinstitut. För att få svar på frågeställningen har vetenskapliga artiklar och tidigare forskning undersökts samt intervjuer med sakkunniga inom ämnesområdet har utförts. I uppsatsen redovisas även utförda experiment med köksbrukare. Resultatet av dessa undersökningar visade på behovet av att måtten behöver ses över vad gäller köksbänkens höjd samt hur förhållande till överskåpet påverkas av en eventuell förändring. Slutsatsen baseras på att det finns en markant skillnad i medellängden mellan är 1948 och 2010 enligt den senaste statistiken från Statistiska Centralbyrån. Dessutom har köksanvändaren gått från att ha varit endast kvinnor till att det idag är en relativ jämn fördelning mellan kvinnor och män. Standardmåtten i köket är baserade på en medellängd på 164 centimeter och idag är medellängden 172,6 centimeter. Slutsatsen i uppsatsen är att en ny utredning bör genomföras med utgångspunkt i den utredning som genomfördes år 1948. Dessutom bör olika professioner så som kökstillverkare, myndigheter, arkitekter och ergonomer medverka i en ny utredning för att kunna uppnå optimala arbetsförutsättningar i köket. / The thesis aims to investigate the need to review the standard measurements of kitchen countertops and cupboards. The standard dimensions today are based on research conducted on only women as kitchen users in 1948 by Hemmets forskningsinstitut. In order to answer the question, scientific articles and previous research were investigated in the thesis and interviews with experts in the subject area were conducted. Experiments with kitchen users are also presented in the thesis. The results of this showed that the measurements need to be reviewed with regards to the height of the kitchen counter and how the relation with the cupboard is affected by any changes. The conclusion is based on that there is a pronounced difference in the average length between 1948 and 2010 according to the latest figures from Statistics Sweden. Furthermore, the kitchen user has gone from being only women to the fact that today there is a relatively even distribution between women and men. The standard dimensions in the kitchen are based on an average height of 164 centimeters and today the average length of Swedish population is 172.6 centimeters. The conclusion of the investigation is that a new study should be realized based on the study that was conducted in 1948. However, various professionals such as kitchen manufacturers, authorities, architects and ergonomists should participate in a new study in order to achieve optimal working conditions in the kitchen.

Shanghaiis one of the cities that are often considered to be have lost identity in globalization. Importing foreign architecture since 1978 is believed by some experts a key causal factor. According to the critical regionalism identifying typical lifestyle patterns like cooking can be a starting point to find a city identity ofShanghai. This essay is aimed at testing this method. It is approached by learning how cooking influences on architecture (building, street and urban fabric) in ancient, modern, and contemporary times through three relations: cooking and kitchen, kitchen and façade, kitchen and street/urban fabric.   The initial hypotheses of this master thesis were that first importing of foreign architecture causesShanghailost identity; second foreign architecture especially residential buildings are hard to adapt to local life without understanding lifestyle; and third cooking as a typical lifestyle pattern can helpShanghaifind her character. However, research results show that technique today can offset most of the constraints brought by traditional cooking. Thus, the conclusion of this paper is that influence of cooking on architecture is limited, and to find urban identity should depend on architects’ and stakeholders’ awareness.

Referring from Swedish collective housing, this project is a extension from Beate Holmbakk's project Four Houses, Four women to a community for five typical women. The aim is to study if architecture can be an intervention of diffrent women identities in households situation when it is combined with the urban context of a specific site.  The chosed site is in Husby, a district with an ongoing project of feminism urban planning to have a city planning from women's perspective. The Building Oslo 1 and Oslo 9 are included in the planning proposal to be renovated as a residential community. The main problem for women in Husby is that they feel unsafe in public places and the lack of gathering spots for them. So the main concept of this project is to create a commnuty that can be a safe place for women's gatherings. Redesigned public spaces with reorganized function in the ground floor level and characterized public kitchens in residential buildings are main parts of the whole project. It could be an experiment to study if households public places can be the medium to enable more visble activities of women, so as to improve the safety and discourse of women in a family or in the city.

The study of ancient Maya intensive, intra-site agricultural systems, such as kitchen gardens, has gained new interest in recent years as a valuable way of interpreting numerous aspects of the ancient Maya's daily life (e.g. subsistence and settlement patterns, population growth, diet and nutrition, gender roles). However, while contemporary Maya kitchen gardens can often be easily identified and studied by cultural anthropologists and archaeologists, ancient kitchen gardens are usually much harder to identify by traditional archaeological techniques because of their lack of architectural structures and other identifying features. To compensate for this limitation, various forms of chemical testing (primarily phosphate analysis) are being used to positively identify kitchen gardens and other specific anthropogenically modified spaces that are invisible to standard archaeological techniques. The archaeological community trusts these methods to be a reliable way of testing soils in archaeological sites for specific agricultural features, even though there has been little research conducted to conclusively prove this assertion. In response to this lack of research, this thesis investigates the viability of phosphate analysis and other chemical tests through a comprehensive literary review of previous and current research and an analysis of the data presented within it. While soil phosphate analysis has been used in past and current research to identify general agricultural features with great success, the chemical signatures produced from this method only give vague information about the soil and what was done to it, making soil Phosphate analysis unreliable to definitively discern specific agricultural areas, such as kitchen gardens, from general agricultural areas.

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This research is an investigation into the playful aspects of designed products. Defining playfulness in products, besides and beyond utilitarian functions and aesthetics, is at the heart of this thesis. In product design research, playfulness, this indispensable element of our mediated world, is either superficially limited to visual seduction or entangled with new technologies that it seems as if play appears as peripheral. The main objective of this research, therefore, is to understand how play can be embodied within a product at the design stage. The research has been supported by a considerable body of literature on the definition of play, product reviews and qualitative fieldwork studies. The fieldwork and ethnographic research was conducted in three stages. First, a series of semi-structured interviews were carried out with second-year product design students at the Edinburgh College of Art. The aim was to examine their understanding of the playful aspects in their own interactive design. The second stage was a series of focus group discussions held with women over the age of 65 to explore how they understand and interpret playfulness in the context of kitchen appliances, and how the change of functions may affect their attitudes toward the activities of their everyday life. Finally, through using a number of ethnographic research methods, five Edinburgh women, aged between 25 and 35, were observed in their kitchens to assess their style of cooking and the way they interacted with their chosen household products. As a result of these field studies, four main aspects of playfulness in these interactions were discovered: communicative and social aspects, dynamic and bodily engagement, the distractive and immersive quality of play and finally, the ‘self-reflective’ aspects of play. The latter is indebted to the idea of ‘ludification of societies’ proposed by Jos De Mul (2005), who draws attention to the increase of playful activities in Western societies in the 21st century and the emergence of a new state of identity, or ‘ludic identity’. In considering this exploration, I have developed a new framework for the ludo-aesthetics of interaction based on the ‘aesthetics of interaction’ which aims to explain the deeper meanings of playful engagements in product interactions. By defining play and reviewing the possibilities of playfulness in products, I have created a taxonomy of playful products, providing a broad spectrum of play, from visually and functionally playful to more subtle and hidden agendas, which only can be highlighted through the active role of users. The findings to emerge from this study are, firstly, playfulness in product design is not an emotion elicited from using a product but rather is a mode, with a broad range of interactions, from objective to subjective, and from personal to social. Second, to assign any attribute of playfulness to a product without considering the contribution of the user, the socio-cultural environment of use and the reflective and constructive interactions of users with products is reductive and superficial. In order to make these findings more tangible for designers and students in product design, I have visualised four food-related scenarios by imaginative personas based on the observations I made in the course of the fieldwork. In addition, I have drawn upon the term ‘replay’ (normally associated with gaming) to demonstrate that playfulness can occur through recalling the objects of the past, the culture of reusing and recycling, and retro style. In essence, this PhD sets the parameters of what designers should be aware of while dealing with people’s playful interactions with products. It is my belief that such awareness, as a complementary element of aesthetic interactions, will help designers to expand their territory of research and widen their scope for design practices.

Although food waste is known to have a negative impact on the environment, little research about the causes for food waste in school and kindergarten kitchens has been made. In order to identify factors with a significant influence on food waste in schools and kindergartens, divided into plate and serving waste, correlation analysis was performed on quantitative factors. Among the factors that were analyzed, children’s age (n=35, p<0.001, Kendall’s rank correlation tau=0.44), the number of semesters with food waste measurements (n=151, p<0.05, Kendall’s rank correlation tau=0.15) and portion size as an indicator for overproduction (n=97, p<0.01, Spearman’s rank correlation rho=0.28) were significantly increasing plate waste. Serving waste was significantly increased by portion size (n=97, p<0.0001, Spearman’s rank correlation rho=0.42) and was generally higher in satellite units than in production units (n=142, p<0.05, Pearson’s product-moment correlation r=0.19). Multiple linear regression models were developed to quantify the factors’ impact on plate, serving and total waste. While possible causes for serving waste should be further researched, the model for plate waste explained over 70 % of the variation in plate waste in schools and kindergartens. Due to the correlation between children’s age and plate waste, schools with students in higher grades could introduce more structured lunch breaks in order to reduce their plate waste. Furthermore, plate waste could be reduced if students are constantly aware of the food waste issue. Schools and kindergartens should also improve the grounds for the planning of their food production to reduce their portion sizes.