I have moved at least 15 times by now and the more places I lived in and saw from others, the more I became convinced that open kitchens are the new schmalz of interior architecture that someday hopefully a new Bauhau-esque change of directions will eradicate.
Some points:
- I don't want the smell in my living room
- Kids: It's good to be able to keep them distanced if needed. If they want to participate in cooking, there's https://www.puckdaddy.de/de/entdeckerturm/
- It clutters the interior design as your living room is always going to offer you a view of used dishes, open food packaging and kitchen utilities (Dare I say it's anti-zen?)
- living room is unusable noise-wise, when open kitchen is in use
- I don't want my guest to see every faux pas that happens in the kitchen.
- Energy usage
That's the practical stuff where the open design falls short. But what annoys me philosophically about them is that there's this cultural delusion: that you're going to have a house party every time you eat. Or that people want to see me cooking, because I'm really good at it.
My experience is, that most open kitchen users just don't cook that much (and dine out instead), so they don't recognize the flaws. And they don't recognize that using "a lot less space" also means that you're probably getting less space sold in the first place. Both of these points illustrate how the open kitchen was something that affluents, especially younger ones were prone to. Just the right peer group to cheer the rest of society into believing that this is something desirable.
Cooking is not a chore, true, not just. But in reality it is a lot of times – and that's perfectly fine!
PS: That's of course subjective. Hopefully my counter position to yours is not taken as offensive.