KITCHEN DESIGN
“Neatness Is Next To Godliness”
I’ll bet you think that we have, by now, completely exhausted the subject of kitchen design. We’ve shown you new ones and cutting edge ones; I’ve even trotted out my own kitchen on my personal blog 
(Thinking About It)—mainly just to abuse a totally inadequate kitchen design, but, hey, that will be changing soon I hope. So, what else is there to say about kitchen design?
Well, as it turns out, lots and lots of concepts I’ve never for a moment thought of, and quite a few of these are, as it turns out, all boxed up and ready to go in one kitchen manufacturer. I don’t mind telling you about him because he’s in Germany, but, also because these people manufacture cabinets, which is quite a bit different from the art of making and installing custom cabinets. But I digress.
The manufacturers of the SieMatic S1 kitchen describe it as “breathtakingly linear and astonishingly direct.” And it really is. What they have done with this kitchen that I particula
rly find myself liking is this: they have designed every bit of it so that it functions in the best possible way. They’ve even gone so far as to consider entertainment for those who don’t find it enough to simply cook in a kitchen.
In keeping with the minimalist aesthetics that make up so much of Euro pean kitchen design these days, the drawers are mostly without handles, the better to emphasize the MaticMotion they use to open and close their drawers with a simple touch. And once those drawers are open, one sees drawer bottoms made of oak and rubber (they call it Grip Deck) that have been specially designed to prev
ent the drawer contents from sliding around.
The lighting system really deserves the title of “system” because there are three levels of lighting, ranging from work lighting to subtle mood lighting of various colors, which utilizes the flexibility of the LED lighting we’ve discussed at some length this week.
And someone like myself, who really NEEDS to have everything nice and neat and orderly, is going to find himself positively drooling at the way they’ve designed their cabinetry so that it en
ables one to do just that—put things where the Hell they belong! This kitchen has an abundance of storage space in the drawers—because of the way they’re configured—and they’ve even devised a kitchen island with a storage cranny that runs right down the middle with a flip-up lid to hide any mess. Oh! I have to sit down for a minute!
Finally, the storage cranny we’ve described ab
ove is actually what they call their Function Channel—so-called because it can be used in a number of different ways. Running down the center of an island, it’s a storage cranny; running along the rear of their base cabinet countertops, it takes on a number of different purposes. It can be space for kitchen utensils and ingredients, or it can be used for electronic accessories, such as a loading dock for a SmartPhone or a MP3 Player. You can even integrate a hi-fi and a flat screen TV. So now, if you’re a novice cook, you can tune in cooking shows in the kitchen and learn while you burn!
Joseph
LED CHROMATHERAPY
“What Color is Your World?”
The coolest thing about having something no one else has is that no one else has it! And if you are one of those who buy into that sort of thinking, well, have I got some products for you. Think about this. You turn on the hot water in the kitchen, wait for it to get hot, then go about washing whatever needs washing. Nothing unusual—you do that sort of thing just about every day of your life, right? Suppose, thoug
h, that we give that most mundane of activities a new twist. Suppose, instead, that you have a faucet that will tell you the temperature of the water just by looking at the water—even in the dark! Because, c’mon, anyone can wait for the steam to begin, but did you ever think of simply waiting until the water changed colors from blue to red? Not many of us have because not many of us have, ta-da, these new products that I just know you can’t do without.
These faucets are from a Germany company named Hansa, and to make sure that their name is always at the forefront, they have used the company na
me as part of the name for many of their products. The kitchen faucet is called Hansacanyon, and it really is a canyon of sorts, as it runs the water down an open channel, just to be doing something different and to emphasize the changing of colors—which is, of course, the most intriguing part of the design. The whole concept of lighting water just seems, from the outside looking in, to be very dangerous, but using LED lights and a bit of ingenuity they have figured out how to do it. And for those who like the idea of color therapy in the shower—or who just want something different there too—they have a Hansacolourshower that is a shower system designed to pamper you with a wide variety of colors.
The other innovative idea in the area of LED lighting that I wanted to share with you is a line of sinks from Lotus Aquatech, which they call Nymphaea. These are all hand-crafted crystal glass sinks that would have been the star of any bathroom on their own, but just to up the ante a bit, these sinks have a ring of LED lights around their bases that have been programmed to change colors as the basin fills w
ith heated water, going from blue to red. What I particularly like about this line, though, is that it takes what could have been a Coney Island idea (glass that changes color) and elevates it to true art with the elegance of their basin designs.
Having adopted the Greek ideal of “nothing overmuch” for my own, I don’t know that I would necessarily advocate using all of these products in one’s home, but certainly one or two would add a little fun and allow you to make your world any color you want it to be!
Joseph
BATHROOM FIXTURES
“Let Some Light Into This Room!”
You want some whiskey in your coffee and some coffee in your tea? What kinda questions are you askin’ me?
Sorry about that introduction, but I saw these pictures and half-remembered song lyrics immediately came to mind—which I have left in their garbled shape, so as to avoid getting a letter from some lawyer later on (man, ain’t the music business something else?).
This particular line of sinks and tubs is from Lavabo, which is an Italian company. They actually have a very full line of bathroom products, and the more I browsed through their website, the guiltier I felt about featuring only their lighted fixtures, so I’ve expanded this just a bit to include some of their more innovative ideas.
But they make my argument in two ways, really. I started this particular series of blogs because I was interested in what could be done with LED lighting, and a search for just that kind of product led me to Lavabo. These fixtures are made of polyethylene and lit up with an internal multicolor LED light, and it is something, as I say, that I dug out really just for the fun of it. For someone like myself who does not attend wild parties, I’m not sure that I would have a lot of use for this product, but others have made the argument that it might be just the thing for those who have tiny children who resist bath time.
But with this, as with so many other things, the idea is not necessarily to find at once the perfect bathroom design. It is, rather, to let the perfect bathroom design evolve, which it surely will, if you but open your mind to every possibility. How far out you eventually go is, of course, a personal decision, but the person who closes his mind to anything different simply gets more of the same.
And, in some respects, I have to believe that those who come up with those marvelous designs for what seems to be the prosaic—namely, bathroom fixtures—do so because they are willing to let their minds flow wherever they will. A case in point is the other items that I’ve presented here. The sink and cabinet—which, believe me, is only one item from an extensive, and innovative, line—is an almost letter-perfect exercise in minimalism. And for those who may have a guest half bathroom that is rather cramped with the traditional vanity and sink almost on top of the toilet, something like this may do much to open up that cramped space and make it, instead, elegant. The shower enclosure is another exercise in both minimalism and superb design.
But to return to what started me on this series of blogs, the thought of water going into a tub made colorful with LED lights is a stimulating one, but what would be even more intriguing, if it could be done, is to have the water itself lit up somehow.
Joseph
NEXT: “What Color is Your World?”
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