KITCHEN DESIGN
24 July 2008
“Make the World Go Away”
I don’t know, I look at these innovative kitchen designs from Europe, and I almost feel like a dog chasing a car. You know the line—what does the dog expect to do with the car if he ever catches it? And, really, I have something of a similar reaction to these wonderful designs I see from Europe. The kitchen design we have leaves a bit to be desired, but in the end, a kitchen design, like the design of any other room, must complement the house in which it resides. Ours is not an ultra modern house, and nothing less than that is going to accommodate a kitchen design like the one we’ve featured here. But, oh, the places we might have gone!
I think what most appeals to me about modern architecture is the fact that it is modern. Queen Anne and so forth are all designs that have had their day. Of course, most of us live in tract housing, which is, well, what kind of design is that, really?
What I like to do as much as I can, though, is to simply look at things with new eyes. It is surely true that I cannot simply drop a kitchen like this one into our home, but from that it does not follow that it is a design that has no value to me. One of the things a cabinetmaker can do is take elements from a number of places and combine them into something altogether different from what has gone before. And those who have, or are contemplating a new home might do well to consider a design such as the one put forth here by Binova Techno-Logical Kitchens.
Because I am so interested in European kitchen design, we have featured a lot of them on this site. I honestly cannot say which of them I prefer, but I will say that Binova seems to have gone them one better. Part of the fascination with the design of these kitchens is both their minimalism and the many ways in which they can be simply melded into a larger room. Rather than a separate kitchen, dining room, and living room, it is possible to have one great room that really feels like nothing so much as a space for simply living. But you cannot achieve such a look if the ambience is that of sitting in the kitchen. Which necessarily means th
at there needs to be some way of making the kitchen disappear, either by banishing it to another room as we have always done in this country, or by making the kitchen simply go away, which is an option that is increasingly exercised in those parts of the world where space is at more of a premium. So, how does one accomplish that?
Binova has come up with a kitchen that moves. Wall units are dropped from the ceiling and are accessible on two sides. And the appearance of the wall units themselves can be altered with a sliding doors system that gives it a sleekness no tract home kitchen ever achieves. They have steel worktops that open up to reveal containers for utensils with suspended drawers and door handles that are totally integrated into vertical surfaces, reacting only when touched.
For those who are looking for a cutting-edge kitchen that no one else has, the solution’s simple. Make it go away.
Joseph
2 Responses to “KITCHEN DESIGN”
July 25th, 2008 at 7:06 am
What a bland piece of crap.
July 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Bland, like beauty, is very much in the eye of the beholder. As I have often pointed out in my blogs on this subject, designs as minimalist as those used in Europe are not likely to find wide-spread acceptance in this country, but I do think that there is much of worth that is being done on the Continent. I also think it might be beneficial to work a little harder on one’s concepts of (1) design and (2) inspiration. Sometimes one can see something one really doesn’t like at all, but if it causes one to say something like, “Well, I don’t actually like this at all, but if the designer were to do…” And whatever one comes up with as something the designer should be doing is something that could then employ in one’s own designs.
Joseph