Design Solutions: Ergonomic Kitchen

DESIGN SOLUTIONS

Kitchen Ergonomics 101: Galley Style, by Marie Payzant

The kitchen is a place where everybody wants to be. Also where you figure out if your friends or children can "dance’ with you in an exquisite choreography, or not. My goal with this kitchen was, and is, that anybody might cook here easily, breezily; I can say "to your left" or "to your right" for most of what the cook wants to find. Guests are both surprised and inspired.

Countertops are 41", so I, at 5’8’ with or without heels, have ease of movement. My daughter, shorter, has her own red farm stool for baking, chopping, prepping. Another stool can be moved in for a guest who wants to sit and talk at the window, or have the occasional cigarette. Out the window. That’s where the vent goes as well, though it was ambitious. There’s no sense recycling grease right back into the kitchen, particularly with the open-plan cupboards for daily tableware underneath the gas burners and the lava stone grill.

Twin ovens ensure my daughter can see, participate in, what’s baking at the lower level. Twin dishwashers ensure, theoretically, we can load glassware and china separately. Still, the sink and a half is useful: the half for the rinsed things ready to load, or for hand washing for later. This means the sink is free. I chose white in a nod to my grandmother’s white ceramic sink, plus I tire of over-personalizing in kitchens. I don’t think it’s particularly "green" to rig one out in styles or colors or trends that will be over when you go to sell.

    The kitchen is the main feature of the home, representing the family’s wealth. The metaphor being in my mind that hopefully you have enough prosperity to feed your family and guests, as well as Elijah when he/she may appear. (We always set a place for Elijah, who frequently shows up).

Since my home is fusion, mostly Asian, the deep mahogany cupboards keep the masculine sense of scale. All my oak floors are pickled to allow the dark furnishings to float in a white box and not feel dense or earthbound. So these main floors easily link to light bamboo. My brother, a perfectionist, put the kitchen in, and tore out four floors before setting in that tongue-and-groove bamboo. So that’s my standard for a contractor: if he wants to put another floor right on top of the ghastly others, he’s lazy, or thinks you don’t know much. It’s so nice to glide into the kitchen seamlessly from both entrances, there’s not a day I don’t bless him for his work ethic.

    Bamboo floors are as flexible as a ballet studio’s, and superior by far to other (hard)woods, and most definitely to tile, which is no friend to the joints of knees and ankles on a holiday of kitchen-centered activities.

    The classic 1940s butter yellow paint over plaster reflects light, replicating the pale yellow bamboo of the floor, again picked up in the parquet bamboo countertops and striated bamboo window ledge which introduces a subtle curve. Herbs can grow here; it may one day be bumped out for more effect, but I have kept the original windows for now, as the condo has 27 six-over-six windows with original leaded glass panes.

    When in doubt, link to other rooms, to the whole. Refrain from too many bells and whistles in the cabinetry: it’s something not to like.

    I’ve cut a window into the main room. So the cook can view the fireplace, speak to guests. What I most enjoy is that I’ve positioned my daughter’s desk just under it, so whe can ask me questions while she does her homework,.

    This kitchen is about function, the study of movement, the best use of space. Left and right movements are calculated, as cooking can be a workout; why not? Yoga can be, for the active, who have little time at times for yoga, the yoga of movement.

    On the right of the sinks is a compactor; not in style at present with recycling at the fore but it does the job easily and can be used while the hands are busy since it opens with a foot pedal. This solves the feng shui problem of where to put the trash, since everything is metaphor. I would worry that it was in the house of relationship, but it’s tidy, contained, and we all have a relationship with what must continually go out as we bring our hundreds—some say thousands—of things into our homes. Just above it, in the house of relationship as well, I make my washing a metaphor for the cleansing of the earth we’re all a part of now as stewards, and as our children will be, keeping a giant crystal near, washing it too after I wash my family’s dishes, pots, pans. It’s not an hour of yoga, but a mercurial momentary mediation to set the tenor of the day. It serves.

    The pullout pantry easily houses a vitamin bar for smoothies; my only health insurance, and the best I have found. The icemaker and cold water on the door are a continual reminder to drink water—city water, with fluoride, not bottled, with plastic. The side-by-side freezer/fridge serves as a night-light as well.

    Overall lighting here has quite a few attributes, and represented eight percent of the budget. There’s more focus here on built-in lighting than in the rest of the home, as the kitchen is in constant reference. Dimmers, counter lighting, full-on lighting for cleaning, for prepping, stove lighting of several types, including various forms of night light as well if needed are all fun to play with, tweak, refine. It works. An illuminated investment.

    One might also exercise, stretch in a kitchen like this, while things simmer. Doorways, of course, are an opportunity to stretch the ribcage, the pecs, lest we all collapse into Western laptop posture. Keep the kitchen about the food, the prepping about the ease of movement and the intuitive balancing of color, and the meal about the intention.

    When in doubt as you spec out your kitchen, ask, is it green? How will I move in it, function by function, task by task? And how will I move in it with others? What might obstruct flow? Am I designing for me right now, or for all who will make use of it for at least the next twenty or more years?

    And yes, if its green, your kitchen design should serve for twenty years. Or more, with routine care and with simple updates of appliances.