Hola, BnB,
250 years ago the upper end housing in California was made of adobe.
As Janice mentioned, a practical kitchen is not a large room. It has to work well for the cook. The mega kitchens in AD appear to be for show, but do the owners of the mansions care if the hired staff has to deal with a kitchen that has two area codes?
As to This Old House magazine, I subscribed to it for some time when "Nawman" was their chief carpenter, but now the mag is essentially ads.
Trueheart