Supported by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E).

With the emergence of the unregulated gig economy, and particularly food delivery apps, new social patterns and economic logics have flourished online, redefining preset gendered relationships and economic power structures. Despite their potential to be places of labour exploitation and wealth concentration, in countries such as Egypt or Libya – where there is a huge gender gap in the workforce – food apps are offering women economic independence, by turning their domestic kitchens into spaces of production.

Building on her Kitchenless Cities research, this project by Anna Puigjaner unveils, through a set of interviews, a new wave of food apps that are transforming the social and culinary landscape in North Africa.

Anna Puigjaner (Spain) is an architect, researcher and co-founder of MAIO, an architectural office based in Barcelona. Her on-going research project, Kitchenless Cities, is focused on housing projects with collective kitchens, where the elimination of the individual kitchen from the house allows a redefinition of domestic labour. She currently teaches at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.