The Weekend Kitchen Project

Or eight-twelfths of a dodecagon

Building a kitchen has a lot in common with writing code: neither endeavor rarely ships on time; the beginning and end of both can be tremendously exciting, but the bit in the middle can be a bit of a slog; and both really require fantastic attention to detail. The big difference is that with kitchen building you get to play with power tools a lot more, while with software development the closest thing you can get your hands on is the little hammer tool in the Xcode toolbar. The Weekend Kitchen Project — so named not because it was completed in a weekend, but because it has consumed one day per weekend for the last year or so — is the story of how we’re turning one room into a dining kitchen, and converting the existing — and slightly small — kitchen into a utility room.

The obvious thing was to start designing the kitchen with the same techniques we’d apply to designing anything else — a website, an application, and so on. And thus was born KUI: Kitchen User Interface. The user interface of a kitchen is a critical component. In our particular kitchen I wanted to ensure that not only were the widgets — the sink, the hob, the appliances and so on — in the most effective locations, but also that the workflow within the kitchen was well supported. In this case it meant not only activities within the kitchen, which helped define the eternal-triangle of fridge-sink-hob, but also the traffic patterns — the flow into the room, from the kitchen area to the dining area, from the kitchen area to the utility room, and also the interaction between the kitchen and dining areas, as we wanted it to be a place where the two activities could co-exist nicely. The placement of doors and windows was a particular nuisance as it limited the locations where things could be placed.

With all of that in mind, many, many layouts were tried out in Illustrator, moving virtual cupboards from location to location, slotting in virtual appliances, tucking virtual chairs under a virtual table. Conventional ideas with peninsular and island units were tried and then discarded as none of them seemed to make best use of the space, or got in the way of walking from one area to the other, or just didn’t feel great. Breaking away from the notion that units must be placed side-by-side led to many other layouts, with the final layout using a giant dodecagon to arrange the units.

Eight units (well, seven full-width units and two half-width units, to be precise) are arranged in eight-twefths of a dodecagon, opening out to allow easy access to both the utility room and the dining area. The shape should make it easy to work in the kitchen with plenty of space to move around, and there are no tight corners that you can get stuck in. The dodecagon partially intrudes into the corridor space from the hall door, not only providing a tantalising glimpse of the kitchen from the door, but actually helping to draw you in to the kitchen and dining areas — people tend not to walk and turn at right angles, so the curved effect of the dodecagon makes the path from the hall to the kitchen area feel quite natural. The wall units are arranged according to an octagon, so there is a nice progression from base units arranged on a 12-sided shape; wall units arranged on an 8-sided shape; all within a 4-sided room.

And so the construction began, ably assisted by my incredibly patient and hard-working dad who has managed not to mention that either, or both, of the plan and its creator must be crazy, although I’m sure this thought must have crossed his mind many times.

Another weekend looms, so more photos soon…