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The Uber Answer To Fitted Kitchens
December 26, 2023
Anurag Yadav
A unique free spirit is an idea behind the ‘Concept kitchen’ that is mobile, fluid in structure and can be tweaked by the user.
The need for an optimised kitchen system today no longer hinges on superficial issues of home economics, but on the contextual function of the kitchen space in an often fast-changing living environment. What do we expect of kitchens as a place and in terms of furnishings; indeed, what do kitchens say about us and our lives? Today, kitchens have the connotations of individuality, are informed by a specific life that identifies its own special niches and is forever fleshing these out.
Most modern apartments have an open-plan kitchen. It all began with the revolutionary Frankfurt kitchen, some of which also had a serving hatch to the dining room that was the first opening step. The idea of an essentially open-plan kitchen was what drove designer Kilian Schindler when he started elaborating his notion of the Concept Kitchen – a project initiated by Naber GmbH, a corporation based in Nordhorn, and now supported by Tolix, a long-standing French company and renowned manufacturer of metal furniture.
The design of modules is made up of open shelves and closed storage areas. Photo Courtesy: Naber GmbH
Structured kitchens
Schindler focused on a kitchen structured by modules but co-defined by the users, who decide how they work in and utilise space in the kitchen and how best to engage it. The kitchen’s shape derives from the opportunities for its use, and the methods involved, meaning the kitchen space evolves depending on the users’ mindset, preferences and needs.
Naber took this idea as its leitmotif. As a specialist in kitchen accessories, the Concept Kitchen was the first time it had marketed kitchen furniture. The design chosen was new and direct, inspired by active life in the kitchen and the objects integrated into it as such as are forever being used or consumed.
Fusing functionality and emotions
In recent years, much theoretical and practical work has gone into moulding the kitchen into a room influenced by both functionality and emotions. It was designer Otl Aicher who in the early 1980s first grasped the kitchen as a sensual space, as a communal place for communicative action and it was he who emphasized the idea of the kitchen as a space for interaction and not just a place where food is prepared. According to him, the idea of the open plan kitchen was in many ways structured as if it were a workbench.
The design is for people who are unwilling to put up with a readymade fitted solution. Photo Courtesy: Naber GmbH
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The model
And in 2006 Mike Meiré revised the notion of the kitchen still further as an organism. His project highlighted the kitchen as a mobile and evolving living space where things centred on appliances, utensils, food and people and their interaction when cooking and eating.
Kilian Schindler took this as his starting point, but expanded considerations on the relationship in the kitchen to our behaviour toward it as a space. Concept Kitchen is construed not just as a place, but in terms of it constituting a module responding to changing spatial needs and conditions. The space we today define as a kitchen occurs where we need it, be it in the office, the studio, the living room, in an open space or in a corner of the room that we assign the function of the kitchen. The kitchen occurs, evolves forth and takes shape where and how it is needed.
The structure of the Concept Kitchen takes up these requirements. Kilian Schindler modified the kitchen both as a forum and a display. The design of the modules, which are made up of open shelves and closed storage areas, squares up to the idea of a kitchen that can change in the course of its daily use and therefore revolves around the model of the ‘open-plan kitchen’ and the procession aspects of function and aesthetics. This is a kitchen system that can be expanded by adding modules, or one’s own kitchen appliances, household items and food, and it is a form of furniture that can be categorised as a storage shelf, living room furniture and sculpture, depending on one’s particular whim at the time. The modular and highly flexible approach to furniture highlights above all the idea of transferring the kitchen as a space.
Moulding the kitchen into a room is influenced by both functionality and emotions. Photo Courtesy: Naber GmbH
The flexible and mobile style
Schindler’s design accords priority to freedom of use. It takes on the form wherever the user’s life takes place. The Concept Kitchen is a completely new approach. For the first time, the supplier offers his own kitchen system, in the style of the traditional Frankfurt Kitchen, but which nevertheless laid great emphasis on the concept of freedom. This design is for people unwilling to put up with a readymade fitted solution and who instead want to take their kitchen with them to their next apartment. It is for people who want to continually be able to make alterations.
Kilian Schindler says, “The term ‘fitted kitchen’ already makes it clear that the kitchen is integrated so that the Concept Kitchen adapts to the user’s circumstances and personal preferences. We have designed the system such that it can be assembled easily and without the need for tools. In this way, the kitchen becomes furniture you can simply pick up and take with you.”
Another question that interested him was: Where does one need a kitchen? He avers that people don’t just eat and cook at home, but also at the office, in the workshop, at exhibitions or even in the garden! “For these meal times, however,” he says, “We don’t need all the equipment we pile up in our cupboards at home. So the Concept Kitchen is not so much a counter-design to the fitted kitchen, but more an alternative—the practical solution for a variety of situations and needs. This new approach consists in deliberately supplying the kitchen only as a frame, which the user fills with life.”
A unique, free spirit, fluid in the structure design concept. Photo Courtesy: Naber GmbH
The uncluttered approach
The modular structure enables the user to buy only those things he needs. The metal frame of the Concept Kitchen is designed for heavy loads—so that for example you can install the oven at the required height. To keep the bases light, they integrated crossbeams into them to reduce the amount of material used and ensure stability.
A similar amount of thought went into the clip system that enables users to adjust the height of the bases. And they are just two of the technical details. Users buy something because it looks good or could be practical—and then when using it they discover that it is really ingenious in the bargain. The kitchen situation here is new. Some modules are placed in the open space, others against the wall, surrounded by things that were already there, and intended for things that may be added in future.
According to the designer, “Often the only thing that concerns people when they buy a kitchen is whether it will get dirty or not. They get a fitted kitchen so they tuck everything away as you do inside a wardrobe. But people of our generation with a more modern outlook don’t install fitted kitchens in their homes anymore. Fitted kitchens hide food away. I think it’s a pity if everything is out of sight. You must be able to see everything in a kitchen!”
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