KITCHEN LAYOUTS

In last week’s post we looked at the idea of applying the kitchen triangle in designing a kitchen, but noted that, while still a useful idea, developments in kitchen design in the 70 or so years since the concept was introduced have complicated things somewhat. In this week’s post we will examine some of these developments, and look at the influence they have had on kitchen design.

Perhaps the biggest change has been that the kitchen has taken centre stage in the social life of the house. With the rise of the informal Living-Dining-Kitchen plan, the importance of the kitchen within this open space has only grown, and so has its size. Often a central consideration in kitchen design is laying out the ‘stations’ of the space in a way that allows social interaction between the person or people doing the cooking and other family members ‘hanging out’ in the space.

One consequence of kitchens getting larger is that the idea of a kitchen triangle is not always applicable. Whereas in the past the kitchen was more or less exclusively the domain of the housewife or even a paid cook, in many modern households there may be multiple people involved in food preparation, and if this is the case the kitchen has to accommodate them - often by dividing the space up into two or more zones, with separate areas for food preparation and/or socialising. The single-wall kitchen, the L-shaped ‘corner’ kitchen, and the U-shaped or C-shaped layouts, though efficient in their use of space for smaller kitchens, are not always amenable to use by multiple people, or to socialising. One way around this is to include a breakfast counter ‘peninsula’ as one leg of the L or U, with high chairs or stools, so people have a place to sit and talk with the person preparing meals/washing up etc.

The gold standard for a ‘social’ kitchen within a larger open plan space is the kitchen island. The island serves as both preparation area and entertainment area, and can be added to a single-wall kitchen to form a ‘galley’ kitchen, or to a corner kitchen. In both cases, the kitchen island opens up the possibilities for using the kitchen socially, by reorienting the space towards the living area, but if space is limited the kitchen island may not be a practical possibility - although you can get away with as little as 1.0m clear distance between your kitchen counters and kitchen island in a single-person kitchen, you need at least 1.2m if the kitchen is to be used by two people at once - enough for them to ‘sidle’ past each other - and at least 1.5m to allow people to pass each other without going sideways.

THE KITCHEN TRIANGLE

The kitchen triangle or kitchen work triangle is a simple rule of thumb useful in kitchen design, first developed by ergonomists in the mid 20th century, who wanted a way of measuring and maximising efficiency of movement (and thus minimising space and thus cost) between the three main centres or ‘stations’ of activity in the kitchen: food storage (the fridge and pantry), food preparation (the sink) and food cooking (the stove/oven). Generally the sink, the most used part of the kitchen, should be in the centre of the arrangement, i.e. between the other two stations. The idea is that if you draw a triangle with one of these three stations at each of its three corners, then the total length of the sides of the triangle should be between four to six metres (some sources cite five to seven metres or other figures). At any rate, anything less than the lower figure probably means your kitchen will be too cramped; and anything higher might suggest that your kitchen is probably going to be too large and you will be spending too much time and effort walking between the three stations.

The kitchen triangle is also useful in making sure that no pedestrian traffic crosses any part of the working space of the kitchen- people going through the kitchen to bedrooms, laundry, etc. should not have to cross paths with or dance around a person using the kitchen. Also, the lines of movement and sight between stations should ideally not be ‘broken up’ with tall cabinets, wall ovens, and the like- there should be open countertop between each station.

As a general rule of thumb, the kitchen triangle is still a valid way of evaluating the basic functionality of your kitchen, even seventy odd years after the concept was first introduced. Of course, each design situation and brief is unique, the kitchen triangle is not appropriate for all kitchens, and these days things like kitchen islands can complicate matters- next week we will look at some of these factors in more detail.

DESIGN CONDESCENSION

From time to time I come across articles on interior design blogs or in other places where the writer traces the development of a particular aspect of architectural or interior design through its history. In these articles, there is often a faint undercurrent of condescension or superiority, as if to say, ‘haha look at those silly premoderns, luckily we moderns know better.’ This attitude is driven by an underlying assumption of inevitable and endless progress, be it social, material or technological, that confers redundancy on everything that came before the present.

A good example of this is kitchen design. The author will sketch out the history of kitchens, comparing the separated and poky little lean-to kitchens of the nineteenth century unfavourably to the modern ‘open plan’ that is ubiquitous today, and imply bafflement that anybody would have chosen to do it any way other than we do. As an aside, it is stating the obvious to point out that between the two ends of this kitchen design spectrum there are all kinds of in-between ‘semi-open’ design possibilities that allow the best of both worlds, but for whatever reason these possibilities are rarely explored; nor in any case are the eminently rational motives behind the design decisions buried in these old and ‘primitive’ kitchens.

Before electricity and even gas, all cooking was done with wood or coal, and the risk of fire was very real. By separating the kitchen off the back of the house, the risk of a kitchen fire taking out the entire house was reduced, particularly in the case of a brick house where the lean-to kitchen was effectively fire-separated from the main dwelling. Cooking fires also generate a lot of heat, which isn’t necessarily wanted in the rest of the house, especially in an Australian summer.

No electricity also means no mechanical extraction fans, so a separate kitchen was the only way of preventing smoke, soot, oil, cooking smells, and water vapour from permeating the walls and furnishings of living areas.

These are only some of the ‘technical’ reasons for kitchens being the way they were; there are also social factors that I won’t go into here. The point is that the design decisions of past buildings shouldn’t be dismissed as historical or superannuated, but rather taken seriously and even learnt from.

Design, like evolution, has no telos; design features, like the features of biological organisms, simply represent the fittest or best responses to the prevailing conditions of the environment in which they exist. If, as I believe, we are leaving our historically anomalous environment of extreme energy and resource abundance, and re-entering an environment of energy and resource scarcity that is almost beyond living memory in the first world, then we will also witness a reversal of the design ‘progress’ seen by techno-progressives as irreversible, and the re-emergence of many of the design elements, and much of the design wisdom, contained in old kitchens and other spaces.

CEILING HEIGHTS

If you’ve lived all your life in newer buildings, you’re probably familiar with the sense of expansiveness and ease you feel on entering a Victorian or Edwardian house, then noting how high the ceilings are compared to those in your own home. What happened?

Regulation of ceiling heights in Australia goes all the way back to 1810, when, under the Governorship of Lachlan Macquarie, an order was issued to the effect that “no Dwelling-house is to be less than nine Feet high” (this figure probably refers to the ‘pitching height’ of the rafters, which is de facto roughly the ceiling height). Presumably the order was felt necessary because builders and developers were trying to skimp on material costs by building low, and nine feet (2.7m) was settled on as the minimum required to provide amenity to occupants. In the Australian climate, tall rooms have the advantage of being cooler in summer, because warm air will pool near the ceiling, leaving cooler air near the inhabited zone at floor level- the difference can be 5° C or more. In the short mild winters, high ceilings presented less of a disadvantage than they do today, because heating then was radiant- open fireplaces heat surfaces and bodies directly, rather than heating the air of the entire space, as is the case with modern air conditioning systems. Taller rooms also allow for taller windows, allowing light to penetrate more deeply into rooms.

As the prosperity of the colonies grew, so did ceiling heights. In particular, a fall in material costs in the 1860s saw ceiling heights of twelve or even fourteen feet (3.6 or 4.2m) becoming relatively common in the homes of the affluent.

The 20th century saw ceiling heights swing back in the other direction. Following World War 2 in particular, austerity conditions and materials shortages put pressure on building regulations to reflect new economic realities, and the minimum ceiling height for habitable rooms was reduced from 9 to 8 feet (2.7 to 2.4m), where it remains today. This represents a reduction of just over 10% in required wall materials. Taller ceilings may also require taller cornices, skirting boards, doors and windows if they are to remain in proportion. Ceiling lights need to be more powerful or more numerous the further they are from the floor. In two storey houses, increasing the floor-to-floor height means more space and material required for the stairs. So dropping the ceiling can mean substantial savings, and for the ‘marginal’ prospective buyer whose ability to afford a house is borderline, the difference might mean being able to scrape together the deposit for a mortgage on an off-the-plan volume-built house.

While ceilings have dropped over time, the size of the average Australian house has more than doubled since 1950.  One way of interpreting this is that we've sacrificed vertical space for horizontal, and not because families have grown (they’ve shrunk), but to accommodate all our extra stuff. Vertical space is seen as not as useful for this purpose; its value is more intangible, more difficult to articulate, and harder to defend against the material advantages of ‘building out.’

WINDOWS ARE PICTURES

WHEN YOU WANT to hang a picture in your house, you choose one with a size and shape that suits the wall and the room.  A rough rule of thumb is that you need to be able to stand at least as far away from a picture as the length of its diagonal: i.e., for a 3.0m x 4.0m picture, you need a room at least 5m deep.  Another way of looking at it is that the picture should lie completely within a solid angle (subtended from your eye) of no more than 40°.  That's why you don't put big paintings in hallways.

    Windows in modern buildings are basically designed to be ignored, regarded as just holes in the wall to be looked through, not at, but that wasn't always the case.  There's a lot to be said for dimensioning and placing a window in the same way as you would choose and hang a picture for a particular wall: by paying close attention to the subject (the view), the size, the proportions, and the frame.  It makes sense, for example, to leave some wall around the whole perimeter of the window, which preserves the legibility of each as separate elements, and allows the eye to either focus on the window and its view, or see the wall as a coherent whole.  If all the windows in the room are designed this way, the eye can flow right around the room without being visually ‘blocked,' and is able to perceive the continuity of the walls bounding the room, which gives a sense of containment and security.  This continuous band of wall between openings and the ceiling is called in Japanese ari-kabe, or ‘ant wall,’ supposedly because it would allow an ant to do laps of the room on this unbroken ‘track’.  

Somewhat ironically, advances in glassmaking technology have been a major factor in the degradation of windows as design elements. Traditionally, glass panes were created by ‘puddling’ (resulting in a characteristic ‘bullseye’ ripple pattern) or later by hand-blowing glass cylinders, cutting them open and flattening them out, resulting in relatively ‘flawed’ glass and small panes that could only be assembled into large windows by the use of muntins - the slim vertical and horizontal timber members that divide and hold the individual panes. These muntins and the bubbles, ripples and optical distortions of the glass give these windows great charm and make the windows impossible to ignore.

In light of all the above, it is a pity that these days the primary consideration when choosing windows for views seems to be raw size, to say nothing (for now) about the obvious shortcomings in thermal performance guaranteed by the heat pouring in or out of these vast expanses of glass (double glazed, low-e or not). Better that we conceive of windows as subjects worthy of contemplation in themselves, as well as portals to a view- as things to be looked at as much as through.

A framed view.

Might be time to go outside?