Social Logic of Kitchen Space in Vernacular Architecture (Case Study: Qeshm Housing) – Examination and Analysis

In every society, culture and social relations play a significant role in the formation of the structure of vernacular housing of any region, especially in the Islamic countries where privacy has a considerable effect on the vernacular culture, and consequently, on the structure of the house. Among the various spaces of the house, the kitchen is more affected than other spaces by such issues, such that its patterns of connection with other spaces and its establishment in the building can be directly considered as a result of the importance of this space and its privacy in different cultures, that is, the definition of this space in different cultures. Thus, in this study, the logical reasoning and space syntax approach, which are among the more prevalent methods in the social logic of space, were employed to obtain the social-cultural concept of the kitchen space. The social logic of space is a method to discover the cultural-social relationships lying in the architectural plan, and to extract the concepts of privacy, the relation and connection of the spaces, the level of space integration, access hierarchy, and permeability of spaces through converting the plan to a graph. The methodology employed in this research is case study, and since the reliability of the results obtained from this method is often sought in its repeatability, the research was performed on 4 different samples. By plotting justified graph for the samples, the values of three criteria of depth, relative depth, and integration have been observed. Despite the popular belief regarding the position of the kitchen in Islamic housing, in that it is a latent and private space behind the living spaces and thus situated the farthest to the entrance of the house, the kitchen in vernacular houses if Qeshm is a space between the private and semi-public spaces that is linked consistently to other living spaces of the building, including chamber, the wind catcher room, and the private room, while observing access hierarchy.