Kitchen Expo Kitchen Designs
30 October 2009
“Stand and Deliver”
Yesterday I talked a little about good design ideas being in Europe for the most part, but a couple of weeks ago my partner and I visited Kitchen Expo, a local kitchen designer who is doing some of the damnedest work I believe I have ever seen. I have spent the last year and a half trolling the Internet, ending, most often, in various European showrooms, but what I most wanted to do, if I could, was to simply find a design company here in the United States that was doing cutting edge work. Well, as it turns out, Kitchen Expo is in La Jolla, which is a community in my own San Diego, California!
What I find distressing about kitchen design as a whole in this country is the sameness and predictability about it. Now, yes, I do actually understand that we are talking about a kitchen with certain appliances and work surfaces that must be carefully coordinated into a workable configuration, paying close attention to items such as work triangles. And, also, there is just the fact that what you are working with is essentially boxes, wh
en it comes to cabinetry, so what in the world are you going to do with that? Well, in this country, the answer has often been, “Not much.” And I see that answer whenever I go down to a place like Home Depot. They really are not made particularly well, and as for how they look. well, there’s just not very much going on there.
What is particularly galling about this, from a purely design point of view, is that kitchens these days are often made of Melamine or Medium Density Fiberboard. And MDF is a product that lends itself to all kinds of shapes, and thus ideas, if only a person will avail himself of the strengths this product has. You can bend it into just about any shape your imagination can come up with and coat it with pretty much every material known to man. So, why in the world does manufacturer after manufacturer in this country insist on sticking to plain, old, run-of-the-mill-hey-how-many-times-have-I-heard-this-old-song BOXES?
And since I seem to be on my soap box today, let me say that the other thing I find myself disliking about kitchen designers is that very few of them actually design a kitchen. I know of one lady who has a web site in which she proudly shows off a “Before and After” Kitchen, but there is no essential difference between the old and new. The new cabinets have different doors and drawer fronts, but they’re on the same type of box, and the new kitchen layout is identical to the old.
Kitchen Expo, by way of decided contrast, actually designs a kitchen and does it in ways that just flat blow my mind. First, they sit down with the clients, which any good designer would do, really, but they actually listen to their clients’ needs and wishes. Then they look for a design that will fulfill those needs while providing the client with something that never was. They have several designers on staff who do nothing but work with designs and then with the cabinetmakers who will do the actual work. And this last is a most essential part of the process because so much of Kitchen Expo’s design work is not just “cutting edge,” but “first ones to ever do this,” which means they have to work carefully with the cabinetmakers to make sure that their ideas can be translated into cabinetry that will realize the vision and hold up to the demands placed on a kitchen, as it is the most used room in anyone’s home. As for the designs themselves, well, that’s genius. And genius always stands the test of time.
Joseph
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One Response to “Kitchen Expo Kitchen Designs”
October 31st, 2009 at 6:46 PM
I’ll second that Blumotion. Kitchen Expo does fabulous work.
Joe