The kitchen is still there, but you can't see it anymore In spaces designed for young people, the heart of the home is becoming smaller and smaller

The kitchen still exists. In family homes, it remains one of the most lived-in spaces, the place where people eat, talk, wander through without any particular reason, and stand around while someone prepares something. But in apartments designed for people living alone, for students studying away from home, for those working in the city, or for people living temporarily, it is changing shape. The kitchen is becoming smaller and more integrated into the living room, losing both space and presence: it does not truly disappear, but becomes more functional, more technical, and quieter.

In many contemporary studio and one-bedroom apartments, the kitchen is no longer a separate room, and often it is not even a recognizable space. It is a fitted wall, an induction cooktop, two cabinets, a small built-in refrigerator, a surface large enough to make coffee, heat something up, or set down a delivery bag. Everything is designed to take up as little space as possible. The kitchen remains, but it must weigh lightly: visually, economically, and logistically.

Small homes, invisible kitchens

At first glance, it may seem like simply a matter of layout. Homes are smaller, furniture is smarter, and solutions are more modular. But the change reflects something broader. Urban housing, especially for young people, is increasingly less a permanent place and more of a home base. People move into a rented room, then a studio apartment, then a shared flat, and perhaps later to another city. In this context, the kitchen adapts as well, ceasing to be the physical center of the home and becoming just one function among many.

The reason is not merely aesthetic. It is not only about minimalism, sleek cabinet fronts, clean interiors, or the highly contemporary idea of a home that is always tidy and photo-ready. Above all, it is about the space crisis. According to Eurostat, in the latest available data published in 2025, young Europeans leave their parents’ homes at an average age of 26.2 years; in Italy, the threshold remains much higher, at around 30 years old. Eurostat also reports that 26.5% of Europeans aged 15 to 29 live in overcrowded housing. Independent housing arrives late, costs a lot, and is often smaller than people would like.

Milan makes this process particularly visible. In 2025, according to Immobiliare.it Insights, a single room in the city costs an average of €732 per month, confirming Milan as Italy’s most expensive city for those looking to rent a room. Not an apartment with a real kitchen, not a one-bedroom flat, but a room. The figure clearly illustrates how domestic space has become an expensive resource, especially for students and young professionals. When even a single room consumes such a large share of the budget, a spacious kitchen stops being a given and becomes almost a privilege.

From cooking together to ordering together

This housing pressure is accompanied by changing eating habits among younger generations. Food still enters the home, but increasingly it arrives already prepared. According to YouGov, 21% of Italians use food delivery services on a monthly basis; among people aged 18 to 34, the figure rises to 29%. The most interesting aspect concerns social interaction: home delivery is often chosen when people are at home with friends.

Saying that «young people no longer cook» would be an oversimplification. The issue is not the end of the kitchen, but the transformation of its role. In many homes, it remains central; in others, especially small and temporary ones, it becomes a minimal infrastructure. Cooking used to be part of dinner time itself: choosing what to prepare, buying ingredients, making a mess, waiting, tasting, and setting the table. Today, in many cases, that process has become shorter. Consumption remains, companionship remains as well, but part of the ritual has been outsourced.

The market confirms this direction. In 2026, according to the eCommerce B2c Observatory of the Polytechnic University of Milan, online product purchases in Italy are worth approximately €42.6 billion, up 6% from the previous year. The Food & Grocery sector is growing faster than average, with an increase of around 7%, driven in part by the strong performance of food delivery and online grocery shopping. This does not mean the kitchen is no longer needed, but rather that the relationship between home, food, and consumption is being reorganized.

Minimal spaces, compressed gestures

Design captures this transformation and makes it visible. In compact homes, the kitchen must be smart, modular, and integrated. It must open and close, occupy little space, and transform into a wall, a closet, a niche, or a technical element. In the best projects, this reduction is also a form of quality: it makes minimal spaces livable, recovers valuable centimeters, and allows different functions to coexist within the same room. The problem is not the small kitchen itself. The problem arises when the reduction of space is described only as efficiency, without asking which everyday actions are being compressed along with the square footage.

Because the kitchen is not only the place where food is prepared. It is also a space for waiting, passing through, caring, and conversation. In family homes, it still serves this role: someone cooks, someone walks in, someone sets the table, someone stays seated even after the meal is over. The kitchen works because it accommodates activities that are not perfectly planned. It is a place where time can be wasted, and for that very reason it creates relationships.

In smaller apartments, however, this dimension becomes more difficult. If the countertop is narrow, if the table folds away, if the refrigerator is tiny, if the kitchen is reduced to a stretch of wall, cooking remains possible, but the way people inhabit the space changes. Cooking becomes faster, more individual, with less room for the presence of others. The home remains livable, but it becomes less accommodating to the disorder of everyday life.

The compact kitchen thus becomes the symbol of a home designed to function rather than to put down roots. A home where everything must be reversible: relationships, furnishings, habits, even the relationship with space itself. It is not necessarily a worse home. Often it is well-designed, carefully considered, and intelligent. But it reflects a specific condition: that of a generation living in spaces that are more expensive, smaller, and more temporary, where even domestic routines must adapt.

A new domesticity

This is not about longing for grandma’s kitchen or imagining that every apartment should have a separate room with a large table at its center. That would be a form of sterile nostalgia, disconnected from the economic realities of modern cities. The contemporary kitchen can be small, beautiful, efficient, and perfectly reasonable. Yet it remains important to ask what happens when one of the home’s most relational spaces becomes increasingly technical.

Perhaps the point is not that the apartment no longer has a kitchen. The point is that, in many young urban households, the kitchen is still there but occupies less importance within the space. It shrinks, hides itself, and adapts. It continues to serve its purpose, but struggles to remain the place where a house stops being merely a surface to inhabit and becomes a shared experience. And if the kitchen has always been one of the simplest ways for people to be together, its reduction is not only a story about design. It is also about the way we are learning to live: more quickly, more functionally, perhaps with less time to spend together.