PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

Pace, pleasure, provenance. Three words that sum up the Slow Food movement, which currently attracts 80,000 people and food producers worldwide. The manifesto, written by founder Folco Portinari in 1989, offers much sage advice that can be applied to how we live in and use our kitchens.

The insidiousness of doing everything in a hurry particularly diminishes the pleasure of cooking. Designing a kitchen to ensure you expend care while prepping and cooking is one of our studio’s key philosophies and easily applied to all kitchen design. We describe this as creating a sense of order by using ‘dedicated work surfaces’. We limit the length of surface to single tasks with connected storage for tools and height of counters, sequencing activities to a different piece of furniture or location where there is logical flow or body movement. This leaves space on the fringes of the culinary zone for French doors into the garden, a friendly piece of furniture, perhaps an antique dresser, a bigger table, rocking chair or a fireplace.

We encourage pre-meal activities as a sociable process so that you can chat with others whilst you cook, look out the window, listen to music or simply pause for a moment without a cupboard or wall three inches from your nose. We therefore locate cooking and prepping facing into the room so that eye contact is possible, ensuring that ‘suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment preserve us from (those) who mistake frenzy for efficiency’ quoting from the Slow Food manifesto.

The pleasure of eating is enhanced by the expectations and beauty of the food when arranged and laid out before eating. We provide a raised food bar or servery, narrow and long, that is easily accessible to the cook and the prospective diners. It can also serve as a buffet point for self-assembly meals with small bowls of different preparations or performs as a leaning post for visitors to chat holding a glass of wine, with the option of perching below on a high stool.

Provenance so important to food, applies equally to physical things. Knowing where your furniture is made, being able to see it constructed, using eco-sourced materials, good craftspeople and in preferably smaller, well-managed workshops, applies the Slow Food principles to the making of things.

You need someone to bring all this together and ensure the kitchen space creates well-being and this is where the ethical designer steps in. Its where design can work its magic in tune with the new mood of the times, inspired so appropriately by the Slow Food movement.

Why does a room look relaxing and yet feel awkward to sit in?  Which makes us happier - a minimalist sleek space or a small room with the cosy clutter and signs of homeliness?  Annalisa Barbieri wrote a thoughtful analysis, “Windows of the Mind,” in the Guardian Weekend about one of my core interests, the psychology of the home.  She talked to John Zeisel and I when she was writing it and about our personal research into how neuroscience can take us beyond Fung Shui.

John is on the board of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture which was set up to get architects and designers to work together on exploring what the links are between the brain and home design.  Our design studios in UK and USA apply neuroscience analysis to kitchens and interior design for all our clients. It’s well described by Annalisa in the article.

At one point Annalisa says I work with local authorities on social housing. I wish I did. What I think she meant was that I would like to, especially as I ran a conference last year entitled, Housing from Heaven. It was an attempt to bring together the different strands of the housing world – architects, interior designers, thinkers and housebuilders crossing their respective boundaries to think creatively about making housing mean home, rather than accommodation (with money, regulations, dull thinking and minimalist space). I spoke at the conference about how our studios multiple approach of combined psychology, brain research and study of humane ergonomics could be applied to social housing, particularly for the interior. Small houses are often in more need of good design than their larger cousins because space is at a premium and the feeling of being cramped makes people less able to be relaxed or ‘literally at home’. Although our studios work for well off  individuals we like the idea of contributing to the lives of ordinary people. Design thinking should filter down to the real economy.