Design Fits
The Social Kitchen: Fitted Kitchens for Better Living
Maybe it’s something about the onset of autumn or even the total lack of decent outdoors weather that leads me to ponder the habitability of the kitchen. More and more people are thinking of the kitchen as more than a place to prepare food and while the barbecues are being extinguished by the rain, and we’re being sent indoors, it’s time to think about the kitchen as a new space in which to enjoy those twilight hours.
Thinking more about it, it’s something of a logical step that we should be drawn into this most vital of the homestead’s rooms: there’s the warmth of the oven or the stove, the promise of food, and the shared expectancy of relaxing when it’s cooked. But how can we think about the design of a fitted kitchen in a way to reflect this? This article is concerned with the idea of the renewed social function of the kitchen in this way.
We may have only yet explored one or two things that draw us into our existing kitchen, but with a fitted kitchen, the space can be dramatically transformed, to vie even with the living room as the preferred evening social space in the house.
Households have increasingly less to do with the ‘two-point-four children’ family unit sitting facing the TV until bedtime, and even in the most conventional family, we’re concentrating ever more on the importance of regular, home-cooked meals, which tends to mean a single evening meal eaten together. Thinking this way about the shape and layout of a fitted kitchen, we might feel that a large, communal worktop/dining area with plenty of comfortable seating would be much more conducive to a sense of togetherness than dinner plates on knees facing the telly.
The warmth of the kitchen can be perfectly complemented by the proper lighting to achieve a natural lulling glow, suffusing through the kitchen and helping to set a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere. Most designs for fitted kitchens are not without an intuitive and practical lighting plan extending to spotlights, illuminated shelving, and other features which not only serve to light an area, but pick out the natural ‘architectural’ shadows seemingly contrasting with the warmly-lit spaces.
Essentially, the advantage of a fitted kitchen bearing the sociability of the space in mind is that an air of sociability and togetherness can be integrally planned from the design up, as opposed to being developed at a later stage – especially in autumn when stodgy, slow-cooking recipes are the order of the day, the need for an inviting and comfortable tone in this space is truly felt. Though we are only beginning to adjust ourselves to re-thinking about this space, there is certainly room for scope, and as autumn presses home, we can begin to see how the properly designed fitted kitchen could redefine its use entirely.
About the Author
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