Your house is outdated. Don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Even the most modern American homes harbor a relic from earlier in the century: the kitchen. As the turn of the millenium approaches, the basic design of our kitchens has hardly changed at all in 70 years.
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But a team of students and faculty at the Rhode Island School of Design hopes to drag American kitchens into the 21st century with an integrated design concept dubbed “Universal Kitchen.”
The idea has been attracting attention in design circles for a couple of years, and appliance giant Maytag Corp. recently bought the worldwide rights to RISD’s Universal Kitchen for an undisclosed price.
“The kitchens that we all know and grew up with were developed, in concept and in terms of setting standards, in the mid to late 1930s, so you’re looking at something that’s rather dated,” said Jane Langmuir, Universal Kitchen project director.
Although refrigerators and ovens and cabinets have evolved over the years, their basic characteristics haven’t. Your refrigerator may have a sleek metal finish and a precise temperature control system, but, from a design standpoint, it’s still a tall, bulky appliance hogging valuable kitchen space.
And in assembling a kitchen, home builders and interior designers now are forced to cobble together appliances and cabinets from different manufacturers that design their products independently of each other.
By contrast, RISD’s Universal Kitchen is a system of interchangeable modular parts from one manufacturer. “The notion was to design a combination of components to fit your individual needs,” Langmuir said.
In a Universal Kitchen, for example, a home owner could choose to keep his vegetables refrigerated in a drawer near the cutting board and to put his other perishables in a tall refrigerated storage unit on the other side of the kitchen. Or he could even choose a space-saving corner refrigerator or one that retracts into the center of an island when not in use.
“We have three dishwashers that can also function in that same way,” Langmuir adds.
The project that seeks to revolutionize American kitchens began humbly enough as a design class project in 1993. In the years since, 100 or so RISD students have spent countless hours developing the innovative design concepts behind Universal Kitchen.
The work would have cost a corporate research and development department millions, which explains Maytag’s interest in the project.
“It’s very beneficial for industry to get involved because it’s a whole stimulus that really can’t happen in their own research and development facilities,” Langmuir said. “The economics of it just don’t pay off.”
Just ask Maytag spokesman Jim Powell, who said his company is interested in further tapping into the talent pool at RISD.
“We’re going to continue to work with them to gather insights on some of the work they’re doing,” Powell said. “This is really to learn more from the students and faculty at the school about the research and insights that were considered in the development of the Universal Kitchen.”
Last year RISD exhibited sample kitchens at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, which is where Newton, Iowa-based Maytag got its first look at the project. The sample kitchens then went on to Orlando in April for the annual Kitchen/Bath Industry Show.
The Universal Kitchen even made a high-profile appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show earlier this year.
But, alas, don’t expect to see any corner dishwashers or retractable refrigerators in appliance showrooms soon. Maytag has no immediate plans to commercialize the Universal Kitchen concept, Powell said.
