Our buildings, both residential and commercial pay attention to feng shui, simply because if a Chinese buyer looks at buying something the first thing they do is usually hire a feng shui advisor to say whether it is suitable and having to adjust the angle of an entry to a public building can be costly!
I was involved on the residential side and the formula for building really high end houses had changed over the years. They would no longer build a house that didn't have an elevator, because otherwise it wouldn't appeal to the older clients, or young ones thinking ahead, and they wouldn't build one without two kitchens, a regular one and a spice kitchen. This is ostensibly to keep the aromas from spices from permeating the house (the Indian buyers called them spice kitchens while some Chinese buyers referred to them as the wok kitchen). They are usually connected to the main kitchen with a door between.
If that seems a needless extravagance, it is no more so that the Lubavitcher community having a second kitchen just for Passover food preparation, to maintain dietary law.
To me, it always seemed a needless expense to a developer - they could have simply held a space as available for the installation of a spice kitchen if a buyer had wanted it, but apparently that buyer segment wouldn't want an 'unfinished' house.
I thought that I'd ask if anyone else had experience with a spice kitchen. I have never been bothered with the aromas of spices; in fact I rather like them. And I'd rather have a larger main kitchen that one chopped into two segments. But maybe that's because my kitchen isn't as big as Jenise's (I've seen medium sized apartments smaller than her kitchen and that doesn't even include the pantry large enough to raise several horses in).
But entirely neccessary since my rectangular kitchen only has two walls and is open on two sides. Without the storage provided by that pantry, there'd be nowhere to stash dry goods. ALL my unrefrigerated food is in the pantry. Plus a few appliances.
