Take a name, the Goddess of water, add vision, a great designer or two, find an industrial furnace and pile of metal flakes, model the mix, sprinkle with fashion and technology and then bake until done. Keep at it for six years, invite guests to lunch, create unexpected entertainment and encourage conversation between kitchen designers and fashion designers. This is a roundabout, whimsical way of describing an event held last week by Brizo faucets during New York Fashion week, Where I was introduced to their products and company philosophy.
 
I never imagined that so much thought – and resolution of opposing ideas – could go into the making of home hardware. Fashion and function, sitting side by side, are at the core of the design of these faucets. I love that it defies the conventionally modernist way of doing design. I now have more respect for these control mechanisms for dispensing water and realize we need intelligent taps or advanced functional faucets. (Excuse my interchangeable use of “tap” and “faucet” ; this is an example of UK and UK English at its most confusing).

 
Brizo launched three new products: Venuto with clean, modern; Virage, a fluid, gentle twist that is also quirky and unexpected; Talo, inspired by organic shapes with hints of steam punk.

All are chock full of technological features as well. SmartTouch replaces grip handles, while Magnedock is a pull-down, handheld nozzle, kept in place by a magnet. Do we really need this new technology for taps? From an environmental perspective, it is crucial way of limiting water use.
 
There are witty touches too. Talo, which is inspired by bluebell shapes, has a vase for holding fresh herbs or flowers. Who would of thought of this to include behind your sink? There is also a bathroom collection in the same style where shelf brackets and a tilting wall mirror add surprise to their faucet collection.
 
Never before did I realize I needed a education in taps and faucets or enjoy it so much, along with the twenty other design bloggers from all over the USA who flew in to share the same experience. Brizo is a company that welds fashion into implements that control water. Sound ridiculous? Not anymore.
 

I think the kitchen industry - and kitchen designers - have to own up. The kitchens most people end up with look depressingly similar. Admittedly there are different looks but we know what they are and these collections - as we like to call them - are hardly the bees knees in variety or works of great design.

We probably know why they look the same, too. ‘No time for real design and no demand for original design’. Market research is often the excuse of the unimaginative for not doing something. I experienced this during my days at Smallbone. The Unfitted Kitchen did not have a market before we created one – and now freestanding furniture is happily back in our design lexicon. We took an intuitive risk.

Think of what great product designers have done to advance design. These include Mark Newsome, Thomas Heatherwick or Marcel Wanders, or architects such as Frank Gehry and Glenn Murcutt. The big fashion houses do the same thing everyday – they create edgy designs that people love, or at the very least will wear. Details first seen on the catwalk become part of our daily design vocabulary a few seasons later.

Why can’t we kitchen designers learn a little from these guys? On Friday Feb 12, during Jason Wu’s fashion show during New York Fashion Week, I have a chance to ask him what the kitchen industry could learn from what he does.

It is possible to solve a brief well, be original and sell your ideas to a client regardless of the size of the budget. You have to do four things: take the client through an unblocking process to establish a unique and personal brief; be prepared to say ‘no’ on occasion; communicate your ideas well; and have a passionate understanding of your craft.

*Please note the title of the blog is a dialectical tribute to Ian Dury’s song Reasons to Be Cheerful Part 3.

If you take away the dominance of food, what comes next? If cooking was the purpose of the 19th and early 20th century kitchen, what activities will take us into this century’s kitchen space?

As back rooms that were places of work for women, where the unremitting daily tasks of caring and providing were carried out, kitchens were not places of fun or leisure, but were rather more of duty and purpose. As household tasks are now increasingly shared between both genders, the contemporary kitchen has become a place where we can mix our domestic activities with enjoyable ones such as chatting, snacking or reading the newspaper.

In these happier kitchen times, our spaces are tailored to suit our instinctive needs – space, light, communication and nature. The kitchen is now a liberated space. So what’s next? What behaviours will influence how kitchen designers create  the kitchen of the future? To predict or anticipate this we need to look at how we live in and utilise the whole house.

Rooms have broken down their ‘use’ barriers, essentially become more multipurpose and open plan. Their conventional labels don’t necessarily apply anymore. Technology (and I say this with care because I have always been a bit of a sceptic regarding claims that it changes us as people) is playing a big role.

The proliferation of iPods, 3G phones and laptops democratically spreads the use of technology to allow it everywhere in the house. Every room can now be a media room, work room, game room or reading room, although not a kitchen! The cellular structure of the house is disintegrating and the kitchen is not just not exempt, but at the forefront.

Over the last few decades, the kitchen has been the most active room in the house in terms of evolutionary use. Dining rooms fell under the remit of the kitchen twenty years ago, being relocated to the front of the house. The various functions of the living room have also accrued over a similar time frame and now hallways, gardens and multimedia are in the orbit of the kitchen.

Five socio-economic forces that might account for these changes include: shortage of time because both men and women work: women’s liberation (if you are in doubt of this look at kitchens in Asia or the Middle East); open plan living with its addiction to light space; less formal social attitudes and behaviours; the widespread adoption of central heating; and changed attitudes about food and cooking.

Stay tuned for more on the evolution of the post-culinary kitchen.