Kitchen Within A Kitchen

A small news show covered new kitchen trends in an interview with Ellen Cheever, a well-known kitchen designer, educator, and frequent contributor to industry publications like Kitchen and Bath Design News. Cheever states that people need their kitchen to be expandable and collapsible..."On the weeknights, they need to be able to navigate their kitchen quickly when they're just warming up a simple meal. But on the weekends, they need it to open up enough so they can prepare a fancy gourmet meal and entertain a large group of friends while they are cooking."
To answer these needs, designers are creating quick prep areas, read: small sink, cutting board, and microwave. Larger kitchens use a small butler's pantry the same purpose, with an added small refrigerator (I can see this turning into a fridge drawer, once all the seal kinks get fixed). Cheever goes on to talk about islands with sinks in them["The days when kitchens always had one sink right under the kitchen window appear to be over...."], and that the kitchen counter height is becoming more variable in kitchens: taller counters that act as a bar between rooms and lower counters for kneeding bread- this reminds me of IKEA's kid's table set-up for their kitchen...which I, of course, can't find....
I guess that prep-cook triangle is long gone, too!

Non-sterile Kitchen

This picture was accompanied by a quote by Antonio Citterio on Dwell. The quote? “As the kitchen assumes its place as the most important part of the home, we are thankfully moving away from the idea of designing the kitchen as if it were a clinic or a sterile environment."

...Looks pretty sterile to me. After several interviews, I've found that another kitchen trend is a movement toward industrial equipment in the kitchen, and a desire for much much more than any one person or family needs. This picture says it all: does anyone need 6 ovens, really?

Pull Commerce

...Found an excellent example of new kitchen trends pulling the market into its trend direction instead of design pushing the market.... La Rinascente's Design Kitchen has recently finished its redesign of its kitchenware's floor. Look familiar? All modern and white.... clean and shiny and not so new.

Another note on trends...

Because we know that any kind of trends visible in modern products are only physical manifestations of the public's perception of the times, I wonder if our modern product aestetics can be translated into other things of the time... what other parts of kitchen life are DIY, open, simple, warm???

Online recipe sites could be DIY, but aren't so simple...
Cookbooks, though, have moved to graph-based layouts, where cooks can use a basic recipe and alter as necessary... fonts are crisp and simple- from the Pepsi logo to that package of Pumpkin seeds, to the canvas bag we brought it in on that has already begun to mock itself like a trendy t-shirt.

Pictures in the kitchen are simple photos with only one or two focal points- often in black and white....

But not just simple. We are searching for that character... that focus on the details. We want to look worldly yet dignified. Able to resist the craziness and secretly tuck it away... like Flemish nobility of the 1400's: First world citizens are both pious yet wealthy....


These things, I'm sure, cross many boundaries, and don't begin or end with anything in the kitchen... but the study of one thing allows us to see the needs of many. Just as one can follow science fiction films throughout history to find the fears of the society that creates them, my study of kitchen life has only led me to a hairline focus on humanity in August 2009.

Beyond Products

I heard a woman say yesterday that people want to keep their stuff, really, they just don't want to see it... don't want to be reminded that they have so much of it... and that even though they want the latest gadgets with all of the bells and whistles, they eventually settle down into a similar routine that they had with the NEW product.. rarely changing.

This makes me think that any truly revolutionary simplification of kitchen life would involve a change in standard concepts of ownership and a renewed sense of community trust. Maybe we see indoor/outdoor community kitchens that house all those clunky appliances that people get "just in case" they get an urge to can fresh strawberries or hand make bread, but then each house has its own simple kitchen that only has what each household actually uses. Of course, new technology could supplement good old fashioned trust... electronic lending logs and key codes might hold all that stuff in place and make everyone accountable, but it gets very big brother then, and I'd like to think that people can follow through on these things on thier own.

I can't see it far off... now, with all the community gardens popping up in the city, and tool lending libraries that I've seen.

It seems like we just want a back-up. We want to be able to do something... we want our freedom- translated into kitchen life, it gets expensive and wasteful.

Same 'ol Same 'ol

Why buy a whole new kitchen, when you can over restore your current one to look older than it really is? Current kitchen trend number zillion? Back-dating your update.

Keeping up with the Jones' now means looking like you live next door to their grandparents.

Go figure.

The Great (Big) Outdoor(Kitchen)s

For those who can afford it, the Arts and Crafts style of blending the indoor with the out, and using local materials is ever so chic.
The outdoor kitchen is coming home, and bringing all of the good stuff: no longer are those giant shiney grills the coveted product, but the outdoor kitchen.... with fridge, table, and sink included.
I even saw an outdoor flat screen TV at Smith and Hawkin last week.

Kitchen life isn't just about cooking or quick meals... it's about reconnecting with nature.... and electronics.