We talk about expectations and communication a great deal as
designers. We use drawings, models,
color boards, and schedules to try and capture and convey a person’s needs and
desires. Great design can only be
achieved through great communication.
So, tell me (better yet, tell yourself) what you expect from your
kitchen.
Kitchens are a wonderful challenge. This one room must be the most flexible space
in the house to support the most uses, but it is also the most rigid in its
functionality. This is in part due to
the role that food plays in our lives.
Food is entertainment, sustenance, emotional bonding, discourse, service,
decadence, guilty pleasure, reward, family, culture, life and love. The preparation of food is no less
complex. Kitchens are more than just a
place to prepare meals. They play a
central role in our lives as social beings.
As a kid growing up, we would return with my family to my
grandmother’s house. My dad and his
brothers would sit up all night in Grandma’s kitchen talking and laughing. She had a galley kitchen with countertops
that faced each other, and this made for great conversation spaces. The food was always within arm’s reach, and
it would fuel their stories long after I fell asleep.
When I think back on her house, I’m amazed at how
inefficient the space was for preparing food.
I would never design a kitchen like that, but it was great for hosting
conversations.
So, what do you want your kitchen to be? What’s the most important role it should
play? Let’s start there.
Maybe you decided that the kitchen should, first and
foremost, be a place for gathering.
(Incidentally, it will be a gathering space whether you decide this is
important or not.) To function as a
great gathering space, you need to support that activity. This means making people comfortable so that
they can hang out a while. Generally,
this means seating. Seating could be
countertops, or chairs, or barstools, or benches. Seating may not even have to be in the
“kitchen” as long as it is within visual and verbal connection with the
kitchen. I designed my own house with
great countertop seating (a lesson from Grandma’s house). The kitchen was also completely open to a
formal dining space and a breakfast nook.
Guess what. No one but me ever
sat on the counters. The chairs in the
eating areas were far too comfortable and close enough not to bother with
climbing onto the countertops.
If you start with seating and conversation spaces, the rest
of the kitchen falls into place more easily.
Preparing food is a process driven activity which is dependent on menu
and cooks. How many people are cooking,
and what are they making. Think about
what you like to make and how you would serve it. Maybe you love to make four course meals with
an audience of observers who you feed as you go. I once designed a kitchen for a woman who
loved to pretend that she was a television chef. We designed it around where the camera would
go and where the audience would be seated.
It ended up being one of my favorite kitchens.
Maybe your idea of cooking is serving up delivery pizza to
the soccer team while you make root beer floats and slice carrot sticks. Seating and countertop space is going to be
really important. Maybe you love to cook
fish, but you hate the smell. What can
be done? What if you love making
breakfast, but you hardly ever eat dinner at home? Do you cook for just two people, or for an
army of eleven? Your menu will decide
appliance selection and placement, lighting, sink locations, storage, ventilation,
as well as size and layout of the whole kitchen.
Once you have seating and menu figured out, you can focus on
décor. The look of the kitchen really
ought to reflect your taste and style.
The kitchen represents a significant part of your home investment, and
for that reason, it tends to be a place where home owner’s second guess their own
tastes against the unknown considerations of a future buyer. Poppy cock.
How can you ever know what the next person will want? You don’t know their values, their tastes,
their preferences. What will they
cook? I don’t know! Did you marry your husband because you
thought he would have good trade in value sometime in the future? Love your kitchen now and chose the cabinets,
colors, and countertops to match your tastes.
That being said, sometimes it’s helpful to have a good
friend you can bounce ideas off of. “I
really like Jim, but he doesn’t have a six pack like Jared? What do you think?”
The best thing about a designer is that they can run through
lots of options with you faster than you might be able to yourself. It’s like having a really honest girl friend
that made out with the whole football team, and who can tell you all about each
player so that you don’t have to spend all the time and effort trying to find
out for yourself.
