Fevzi Karaman Kitchen Design
20 November 2008
“Déjà vu”
When I was a kid and still going to the Marlow Theater in Helena, Montana, I saw a movie called “The Man Who Never Was” about a British attempt to trick the enemy into weakening Sicily’s defenses before the 1943 attack, using a dead man with faked papers. It was a movie that fascinated me no end, as evidenced, I suppose, by the fact that I still remember quite a bit from a movie I saw half a century ago! I bring that up, though, because in today’s blog I want to write about a kitchen design that is not yet.
The impetus for these blogs is just that, really: the new and innovative. It’s because of my own concepts of design, I suppose—and I hasten to add that I don’t have the abilities of most of the people I’ve been featuring in these blogs, especially today’s subject! But kitchen design, to me, is considerably more than, “What kind of door do you want, lad
y? We’ve got twenty to choose from.” Really, anyone who ever got into design in any depth at all knows better than that.
Kitchen design is something that springs from the needs of the client. A few years ago I took a class in Kitchen Design, and the instructor said that whenever she designs a new kitchen, she visits her clients while they’re either preparing, or pretending to prepare, a meal. She wants to know what kitchen utensils they use on a regular basis, where they put things that come out of the oven, and so forth. And over and over the question is, “What would you like to have instead? If you could do anything for your kitchen, what would you do?” And that, of course, is adherence to what must surely be the First Axiom of Design: Form follows function.
But as useful and eye-opening as that class was, it was mostly a class in where kitchen design had been. But what I would most like to study, if it were possible to do so, is where kitchen design is going, and for that you have to go on the Internet, which is why I spend so much of my time with European kitchen designs. They do actually have the standard lines of built-in kitchen cabinets quite similar to what is available in this country, but in Europe, that sort of thing is really just the tip of the iceberg, as regular readers of this site know.
And with that I can now talk about Fevzi Karaman, a Turkish designer who won the 2006 Silverline kitchen design competition with a design for a kitchen that is not yet in production. It’s a kitchen design concept that would serve very well for a second kitchen, or for those who simply don’t have the room for a conventional kitchen. 
I remember the efficiency apartment my younger brother lived in for a time during his bachelor days. It was really just two rooms: the bathroom and a room in which living room, bedroom, and kitchen were jumbled together. The kitchen, albeit much smaller, was still the standard type kitchen, though, with its wall cabinets and base cabinets across the end of the apartment, with the stove and refrigerator crammed in wherever they would fit. But Mike was embroiled in the world of business in those days, a young man on the move, who spent very little time at home, as he was always in the office. Something like this concept would have suited his needs perfectly and left more room for the rest of the apartment.
Despite its small size, Mr. Karaman’s kitchen design actually contains a stove, sink, recycling bin, and storage room for dishes. It is something that could go in a kitchen of just about any size. What’s the virtue of kitchen design in abstract, you ask? Funny you should ask! Actually, it has every relevance to kitchen design if we are, once and for all, to do something else with a kitchen, something that works, something different and innovative, something that thrills you every time you enter that room. Two hundred years ago kitchens were little more than caves. Now look at them. And then look again to see where they are going, which is what most interests me. How off the wall is something like this? Well, tomorrow I mean to revisit a kitchen concept that IS in production, and if you find yourself with a strong sense of deja vu, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Joseph
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