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.

Don’t grimace, it could be coming sooner than you think. The pressure is on. Cooking in your kitchen is the new ‘right-on activity’, the new black in fashion terms. Wholesome, socially and morally correct behaviour, it makes a virtue out of the downturn, a return to behaviour inspired by instinct and pure of motive, both creative and productive. Short of growing the food yourself (although you can also shop to match the ethos), it’s the ultimate way of nurturing your family and friends, rewarding your appetite and being economic. Sleeping might be the longest activity we undertake in our home habitat and where we are the most vulnerable, but cooking is the ultimate expression of our nesting instinct. It’s the core activity bringing rhythm to our day, satisfying our hard wired needs for sociable activity—a key component for our happiness, well being and survival.

Where we do this affects our enjoyment and efficacy of cooking and its related activities. So kitchen design is more important than ever. Is the kitchen attractive to other family members than just the cook? Do they want to linger? Does it establish eye contact to encourage chat and provide a comfortable place to perch? Is the lighting designed for high octane use and for diners to relax? Can the fumes get out and can the children play within an easy distance or be visible in the garden from the cook’s action spot? Cooking maybe back in fashion, whether it’s the new black or simply because of back to basic necessity, but things are heating up for kitchen designers (please forgive the pun).