• Review the architectural layout of your house. Bring the kitchen-living room to its centre if you can. Room uses can be swapped. The biggest room on the ground floor is ideal as many of the living functions have been added to the kitchen. Choose one next to the garden, with French doors if possible, as this hugely increases its user friendliness.
• People tend to be happiest between 7-10 pm, according to surveys outlined by Richard Layard in his book, Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. Not coincidentally, this is the time the kitchen is most likely to be occupied. It’s an opportune time when human communication is hard wired, after work and before bed. If the kitchen environment is well designed, we can take advantage of this. As it is now a multipurpose space, we expand our natural sociability by installing a hearth, a second table for doing homework, or a perching point for chatting whilst doing a variety of kitchen tasks.
• The visual ‘ownership’ of the terrace or veranda immediately adjacent to the kitchen belongs to the kitchen but it needs to be designed so that it is highly functional and natural, almost wild in terms of plants, trees and shrubs. Space to eat at a table needs to be complimented by an area for chilling out with bean bags, and floor level living. A portable low level fireplace works wonders in the evening for sitting round, echoing a campfire experience. This is so rewarding and easily done by using an old drain cover raised off the deck.
• The design and décor can make the room feel like a comfortable and welcoming space, more akin to a living room than just a cooking zone. Food encourages us to cook, clean up and linger. A group of Harvard economists have created an economic theory that the rise in weight of Americans is inversely related to the time it takes to prep, cook, clean up, lay the table, etc. The more technology reduces food costs*, the more we eat and the less we feel bothered to cook and the more we snack. Reverse this and you have a virtuous, not vicious, circle.

* David M Cutler et al. “Why have Americans become more obese.” Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol 17 No 3 (Summer 2003). pp 93-118.

• Include a multi-level central island or soft-edged peninsula to make the act of cooking a sociable, pleasurable experience. Cooking and prepping should occur facing into the room. Designing ergonomic but user-friendly furniture puts the cooking at the centre of the room and helps the cook feel in control. He or she is like the conductor of an orchestra, bringing harmony to the process along with effective delivery of the food. Cooking facing towards the wall is no-no
• Include a plating surface near the cooktop that can double as a food bar. In this way, you can catch those meals that might have ended up as snacks or one-person events. Today’s busy families have to accommodate an array of diets and activities. But the most important thing is not what you eat, but eating together, even if standing up. By serving tapas, mezze style, everyone can find something they like and still eat together, serve themselves with others looking on so that portions taken are reasonable and then take their plate to the table. Not enough kitchens have these serving bars. Ideally, they should be accessible from behind the range, and raised in height to separate them from the messier cooking surfaces.
• A sense of order is key to making cooking efficient. We have developed a concept called dedicated work surfaces that provides enough but not too much counter top space to do one task efficiently. These are positioned carefully so as to be adjacent to related tasks, but still leave enough space for sociable pieces of furniture like a sofa and hutch/dresser.
• Having a place to display family pictures and children’s pottery is a clear sign of hominess. Adding bowls of fruit is both visually delightful and offers children and adults a chance to assuage their mid-meal hunger with something healthy. It’s also a delightful place to show off home grown produce. No kitchen should be without one.

The answer is yes, in more ways than you might think. It’s possible to design a kitchen that not only supports but encourages healthy eating, in a subtle but effective manner. At the same time, this approach also creates a healthy kitchen that doubles as a wonderful place to spend time.

Here are a few specific ideas to consider, much of it inspired by Michael Pollen’s recent book, In Defence of Food:

• The role of the table as the centre of healthy food habits is far more important than it might appear at first glance. Conversation plays a major role in slowing down eating, adding to the “food experience per bite”. Eating food slowly is effective at reducing over-consumption. According to various studies, it takes the brain 20 minutes to catch up with the stomach. Delaying the intake of food with conversation and pauses, such as serving a new course, allows the body the has time to give you a signal of fullness. In addition, it helps us to go for quality foods, rather than quantity. In turn, this creates greater interest in the food itself and greater enthusiasm for taking the time and trouble to prepare it.
• A well-positioned, handsome table with an atmosphere of enjoyable sociability, set in sunlight or candlelight, can also make a big difference. With a belief that getting together is worth it – much better than eating alone with nothing but the TV for company – then you can give round one to the ‘designed’ environment. It’s no accident that the breakfast nook is a common request from our clients. It’s a protected and cosy spot for consuming civilised meals.
• A full meal, eaten regularly, reduces snacking. The formality of being at a table, consideration for others and sociability of manners, turns the meal into a shared experience. The French serve modest portions, controlling plating size, which in turn sends the right visual cues. This is because most people have a ‘unit bias,’ according to psychologist Paul Rozin. He explains that they take their cues from what is on the plate, not what they necessarily want to eat.

Stay tuned for installments 2 and 3 for more tips on “Cooking & Furniture” and more!

One of the core tenets of our design philosophy at JG Studios is that a happy kitchen is the central ingredient in the recipe for a happy home. And to create a happy kitchen, you need to cater to the youngest members of the family by creating a safe, warm space where they can learn the joys of preparing food – not to mention the fun of making a mess that mom gets to clean up afterwards! (Can you say “Food fight!”?)

We’ve recently been in touch with chef Dorette Snover, founder and owner of C’est Si Bon cooking school based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She and her husband opened the doors to C’est si Bon after Hurricane Fran destroyed their old kitchen in 1997. When the family completed rebuilding the kitchen the next summer, they invited some of their son’s friends for a week of cooking.

“We combed the nearby woods for blackberries for luscious pies, and took [the kids] on adventures to goat-cheese farms…The last night we invited their parents to come to dinner and enjoy a meal cooked from scratch,” Dorette explains.

That experience led her to a new career in cooking with kids. “Eleven years later, we teach over 160 young people in the Kid-Chef day camps and over 50 in the Teen-Chef tours,” Dorette says.

In addition to residential and day camps in North Carolina, C’est si Bon offers three culinary tours for teens in Provence, the Loire Valley and Paris. Students attend cooking classes with local chefs, shop for ingredients at open-air markets and visit local cheese artisans and beekeepers.

Dorette’s approach to food is reminiscent of our approach to kitchen design, and both of us incorporate philosophies such as the slow food movement into our work. For example, provenance, which is 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. (For more on this subject, see Johnny’s post on “Slow Kitchens”).

We’re putting together some tips on cooking with kids – and how to create kitchens for kids! As one of our clients, Tiffany Wood, told the Financial Times in a recent piece on curvy kitchens (get the whole scoop here), the extra large work spaces we installed in her kitchen lend themselves to family bonding over food: “I have three children and they have countless cousins, and they all love to cook. They come and make pancakes crowded round the great big worktops - I can squeeze in 12 children round those curves.”

Stay tuned for more on how to squeeze more children ’round your own cooking spaces.

The recession is closing in on minimalism. Sleek, cool, mono-aesthetics for people who don’t want to actually live in their homes is so last year. Goodbye as well to souless power kitchens where any signs of life are verboten. There are no remnants of actual cooking, with everything cleared up before you can say, “We’ve had a great dinner.”

Minimalism costs a lot. Less is meant to be much, much more and the punters want you to know it, the reverse of what you would hope. Hidden hinges, skirting boards, massive wall to ceiling cupboards, wide floor boards, frameless doors and windows do not come cheaply. It’s a statement of control and the power to impress. I must admit that one wants order if the chaos and clutter become too invasive, but it only takes a single glance at a Russian Oligarch style banker penthouse apartment and I quickly want my clutter back. These swanky pads are destined for people who don’t want homes but swanky hotel rooms, fully owned but barely lived in. If these minimalist interiors were once our aspirational home models, they are no longer.

All of this is not an attack on modernism, but merely a realisation that its true heart lies in a more accommodating and instinctual approach. When you visit Charles and Ray Eames’ Case Study house in the Palisades, you get a full taste of how they lived with found objects adorning walls and tables, a huge low level trolley on which sits a portable jungle – moved around the room according to mood. You can feel how much they loved living there.  Minimalism is grand standing for interior designers and frustrated architects who made an alliance with overly rich domestic control freaks. Letting designers impose a strong style statement is only justifiable if it makes people feel comfortable. In these troubled economic times, I suspect we are going to loose our interest in high status interiors and go for simpler, instinctual designs that cater to basics, such as functional well-made furniture, creating the right ambience with access to outdoors, sunlight, natural materials, and things handmade to last.  IKEA stuff that looks great but quickly deteriorates seems wasteful and unecological.  We will learn to accept that things will wear, and should be worthy of repair.  There will still be room for pattern and decoration and texture, but it will be chosen more for provenance and mood and less for fashion.

What could come out of this financial crisis that would be good is support for artisans in all aspects of home renovation, with a concomitant desire for authenticity and less bling, more confident personal expression, the use of found objects, expanding the use of junk shops and repairing things. Careful choice exercised whilst purchasing things will be allied to the end of anti-mess behaviour at home and the minimalist lifestyle.

In the April issue of the Financial Times’ How to Spend It guide, Katrina Burroughs explores the “crescendo of curves” that she says has been creeping into design vocabulary the last few years. In her article “Arcs de triomphe”, Burroughs includes a quote from one of our favourite clients, Tiffany Wood, who told her about the kitchen we designed for her home in Bath:

Tiffany Wood, an interior designer based in Bath, commissioned her cabinetry from Johnny Grey, the original promoter of the wavy line in kitchen design. Grey’s kitchens start at £75,000 and each is a unique work of ergonomic art. Wood chose a mixture of walnut, sycamore and oak, with polished concrete and lava stone, and asked for ‘curves every which way: vertical and horizontal.’ Thrilled with the result, she says ‘It’s far more relaxing to be in a space where you know you aren’t going to bang into a corner. We have no sharp edges.’

Best of all, she finds the curves lend themselves to her frantic family life, maximising the ratio of work surface to floor space. ‘I have three children and they have countless cousins, and they all love to cook. They come and make pancakes crowded round the great big worktops - I can squeeze in 12 children round those curves.’ Wood adds: ‘My curvy kitchen is warm and friendly. It does make people smile.’ Ah, the most important curve of all.

See the full article on page 19 of the April 2008 How to Spend It digital edition.

When recently asked about his use of curves, Johnny explained it as follows:

My use of curves was initiated from the way peripheral eye vision works. Corners stimulate one’s defence mechanism. Imagine a tunnel four feet wide with spiky rocks sticking out. All you will do is focus on preventing being hurt. If the same tunnel is lined with upholstery, you breeze down it thinking of the beautiful experience you will be having in bed or at the table tomorrow. When peripheral vision is activated, you use much more brain capacity because it is all about self defence and the hormones associated with flight and fight mechanisms – which will then be activated. Full frontal vision is so much part of our normal day to day experience that we effectively can focus on other tasks or experiences and the ‘nice’ emotions. Plus curves work satisfactorily with the body and eye from a symmetrical perspective.

She eloquently explains how Johnny’s unconventional approach differs from traditional American kitchen design:

Grey’s unconventional kitchens are a radical departure from conventional American ones. They feature jazzy colors, original artwork, playful, custom cabinetry best described as “sculptural” and work areas that are carefully tailored to a client’s measurements.

She continues:

American kitchen designers tend to box up everything behind closed cabinet doors, but Grey prefers open storage adjacent to the place where an item is used. He maintains this is more convenient, eliminates unnecessary movement and makes the space feel lived in. He puts plate racks above the dishwasher, open racks below a cooktop for large pots and hooks above it for cooking utensils or smaller pots.

Read the full article here. Also check out her September 20, 2008 Washington Post piece on our Dexter kitchen at the Showtime Showcase House in New York last autumn.

Check out the Feb 15th edition of the Telegraph for insight into how Johnny has set up his own family kitchen. The kitchen designer’s kitchen! A taste of Johnny’s explanation:

To create a sense of belonging in a kitchen, first think about the “long view.” Being able to see what’s in the distance relaxes you. This was a garage: we put in the French doors to link it to the garden and the view over the South Downs.