During the second half of the nineteenth century, several architectural proposals appeared in the United States—from housing to urban planning—which included spaces and collective domestics services. At that time, in the middle of a deep process of industrialization and city population growth, both housing and collectivity were deeply understood as tools for social transformation. By the end of the century, cities like New York were filled with apartment houses that lacked kitchens. Instead, these apartments were supplied with domestic services which included collective kitchens, dining rooms, centralized vacuum systems, nurseries, shared maids, etc. These projects, which proposed the creation of collective domestic services, allowed the displacement of some domestic elements, habitually fitted inside the limits of the house, towards the public sphere. In this process of domestication, the elimination of the kitchen from the house was substantial for the construction of the collective.

Anna Puigjaner is an architect, editor, and researcher. Puigjaner is the cofounder of the architectural office MAIO, which works on spatial systems that allow theoretical and practical positions converge. She is currently teaching at the Royal College of Arts in London and at the Barcelona School of Architecture. Puigjaner has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University; Yale University; Berkeley University; University of California, Los Angeles; Faculdade de Arquitectura da Universidade de Lisboa; and Brussels UCL-LOCI, among others. MAIO's works have been published in international magazines such as Domus, A10, Monocle, Frame, and Detail, among others; exhibited at Biennale di Venezia, Chicago Architecture Biennial, The Museum of Modern Art, and at the Art Institute of Chicago; and awarded several times including FAD Award. Her personal research is focused on Kitchenless Cities, housing with collective kitchens, where the elimination of the kitchen from the house allows the domestication of the urban sphere. Her project has been awarded with the 2016 Wheelwright Prize from Harvard Graduate School of Design.