Solar Dish Kitchen

Solar Dish Kitchen was designed for two informal poor urban settlements (squatter communities) in Mexico. Cooking meals for their children was one way the mothers organized themselves to supplement the diets of their children and reduce costs. A retrofit to an existing school incorporates solar cooking, solar hot water heating, grey-water filters to treat the dishwater, natural light as the main source of lighting, rainwater catchment, and photovoltaic panels to allow the kitchen to go off the grid. The Solar Dish is built from bicycle parts, and small vanity mirrors create the parabolic mirror surface which concentrates the energy of the sun on a pot or stove in the kitchen. The community and local government plan to build more kitchens based on this prototype.

1. Designer/Manufacturer: BASIC Initiative Mexico Program of the University of Texas and the University of Washington
2. Mexico, 2004
3. Aluminum, steel
4. Dimensions: 5’ radius (training), 15’ radius (standard)
5. In use in: Mexico and India