“Eating in our time has gotten complicated, needlessly so.” The opening lines of Michael Pollan’s new book, Food Rules, remind us how to use our instincts to navigate our relationship with food. This parallels what has happened in kitchen design. We have lost touch with our basic needs. Expressed in modern folk wisdom, Pollan outlines a manual for eaters with the goal of increasing their health and enjoyment of food. It was with great interest that I attended his humorous and elegant talk at the Royal Society of Arts in London.

Familiar with much of his ideas after reading In Defence of Food, I learnt new facts such as that the average American has gained 18 lbs since the 1980’s when low fat and diet products were introduced. This is the opposite of what what was originally intended. The food industry discovered a way to sell more food by demonizing fat and replacing it with salt and sugar. They persuaded the public that diet food was good for us and we could binge as much as we liked.

Pollan says it is not just what we eat but also how we eat that is crucial. One of his food rules is to eat at a table, whenever possible, in the company of others. It reduces both greed and speed, and improves digestion and pleasure. He has summed up the job of kitchen designers in a nutshell. During the 1980s, kitchens were created where you could not have conversations because the work surfaces faced the walls, showroom spaced clad in plastic, shiny surfaces and matching doors. Domesticity was too old fashioned or simply too difficult to mass produce.

The kitchen industry needs to avoid the unintended results created by the food industry – the consumption of large quantities of food has led to large cabinetry and appliances. The focus should be on creating spaces for living, eating, prepping and cooking. Instinct tells us everything we need to know. We want to be in a room because it feels like home.

A kitchen has simple needs: modest-sized, freestanding furniture pieces for each major function (like cooking, prepping and washing up), minimal countertops, a walk-in larder and a storage cupboard or two, a decent table, access to the outdoors and panoramic eye contact. And don’t forget about a place to make a mess, have a drink, chill out, experiment, and generally behave like you live there.

So throw out your matching units, continuous counters and matching doors with repetitive handles. You have nothing to loose but convention, and everything to gain. More space, less cost, more of you in the surroundings and less of being self consciously stylish, more playing with colour and use of vintage pieces. Enjoy discovering your inner interior designer.

Our new design ‘coalition’ between freestanding furniture and built-in pieces – in other words, a modern update on the unfitted kitchen – is being finalized in our UK studio now for Decorex, an interior design show in London (September 29- Oct 3rd). Custom-made pieces that fit the unique dimensions of each client’s space will be balanced by freestanding furniture whether, vintage, recycled or off-the-peg. We want our kitchens to be relaxed, well-furnished rooms where you feel at ease.

When I first developed the idea of the unfitted kitchen in 1984, it was a protest against rigid, wall-based counters in a single finish. The new, modern unfitted kitchen is a negotiated settlement between the two. The truth is that it’s hard to use only freestanding pieces to make a highly efficient culinary centre, but it can be done with size-specific pieces.  What’s new to our current design thinking is that the social activities of eating, gathering around and multi-tasking on the table are now considered of equal importance in terms of space allocation. The civilizing aspects of good interior design need to be hard wired into the ergonomics.

We see the customer as a joint designer and collaborator, not just for supplying their personal requirements for the brief, but also assisting us with all aspects of the décor and finding vintage pieces we can incorporate at the heart of the design. The end result should not feel like a visit has taken place by a kitchen cabinet salesman, more like a passing ergonomist who is a space provocateur with a secret interest in long lunches and a passion for art. That does not mean in-your-face design from our end. Our furniture should give pleasure but be modest and easy to live with. Our plate rack prototype below illustrates our intentions.

Tell us what you think about our conspicuous, non-consumptive approach to kitchen design.

William Wordworth’s poetry set the 19th century alight and changed how we view our relationship with nature. He believed that sensitivity to nature transforms our emotional and spiritual lives – a philosophy he lived by. He saw the imagination as a tool for heightening our senses and adding to our happiness. He, his wife Mary and sister Dorothy valued simplicity, hard work and the activities of family life.

It was at Dove Cottage, overlooking Grasmere in Cumbria in Northwest England, he wrote his most celebrated poetry. The family called the room they occupied for everyday living the Houseplace, a local Lake District term for an all-encompassing parlor. Modest in size at about 15 ft by 20 ft, it was cosy, easy to heat and was used in conjunction with the kitchen.

A simple, prosaic word, ‘Houseplace’ is an example of the innovative ways Wordsworth used common language to express his most heart-felt ideas. One of the core beliefs of the Romantic movement was that nature represented something close to heaven on earth, and a simple, rustic way of life gave people access to this.

I recently took my family to stay in a house just above Dove Cottage rented from Landmark Trust. We saw it from our window each day and walked through the garden to reach it. Although a popular pilgrimage for tourists and Brits alike, the tours, room-by-tiny-room, transport you back in time. You can see where Wordsworth wrote his best poems, some of them undoubtedly on the table in the Houseplace. You can still feel its atmosphere and appreciate the worn, aging fabric, panelling and floors, with low light – yes, I feel at home here.

I want to exit with the last few lines of “The Prelude”, which make you realize why the contrast between indoors and being in nature are so complementary:
Those recollected hours that have the charm

Of visionary things, and lovely forms

And sweet sensations, that throw back our life

And almost make our infancy itself

A visible scene, on which the sun is shining