Passthrough (architecture)

A passthrough (or pass-through) is a window-like opening between the kitchen and the dining or family room. Considered to be a conservative approach to the open plan, in a modern family home a passthrough is typically built when a larger opening is either precluded by the locations of structural columns or is impractical due to the need to preserve the wall storage space.

If dining involves dedicated waiting staff, the pass-through allows servers to work without stepping into the kitchen; a restaurant design frequently has two passthroughs, one for the food and one for the dirty dishes.

The term "pass-through" is also used for any opening in a wall between the rooms intended for passing items.

Window for communications
In addition to the main purpose of passing the dishes between the kitchen and the dining area, a larger passthrough also improves guest/host communications, adds openness, and brings more light into a smaller kitchen. Passthrough allows the kitchen door to stay shut, with shutters used to further isolate the noise, smell, and messy views of the kitchen from the dining area.

Post-World War II household rearrangements dictated the need for better communications between the kitchen and dining areas. Pre-war, the meal preparations in the middle-class homes involved domestic help, a closed-off kitchen was desirable to keep odors (and voices of servants) out of the public area. With wives becoming solely responsible for the meal preparation, cooking got merged with socializing. The house layout, via passthroughs (or elimination of the kitchen wall altogether), signaled that the kitchen worker was now a wife and a mother, and not a servant.

In the original design of the Stahl House the boundary between the kitchen and the rest of the space were not just demarcated by a lowered ceiling and a passthrough: the entrance to the kitchen could have been closed off by sliding doors, thus leaving the very large passthrough as the sole means of communication with the rest of the house, still providing the wife a "commanding view". A view from other side of the opening also applies: combined with glass walls, the passthrough facilitates a common feature of the suburban life, surveillance: "…there is no escaping the omnipresent eye of the community" (William Mann Dobriner). This constant visibility (including the household members observing the wife in the kitchen cooking), perpetuated the heteronormative structure of family and society. Just like picture windows, the kitchen passthrough in Stahl House made people on both sides of the opening into spectators.

In the Julius Shulman's series of photos of the Stahl House the passthrough embodies the husband/wife interaction, with the woman in the kitchen and the man on the other side of the passthrough.