Kitchen Planning

Guidelines, Codes, Standards

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118404621
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Interior Design

The leading resource for student and professional kitchen designers—completely revised and updated

Kitchen Planning is an essential reference for any designer working in the kitchen field, containing everything a professional needs to know to design kitchens that are convenient, functional, and efficient, and that meet the needs of today's lifestyles. Based on the National Kitchen and Bath Association's Kitchen and Bathroom Planning Guidelines and the related Access Standards, this book presents the best practices developed by the Association's committee of professionals through extensive research.

This Second Edition has been completely revised and redesigned throughout, with new full-color photographs and illustrations and a special emphasis on client needs, research, and references to industry information. Features include:

• New and expanded information on universal design and sustainable design
• The 2012 edition of the NKBA Planning Guidelines with Access Standards and up-to-date applications of the 2012 International Residential Code®
• New information about storage, cabinet construction, and specifying cabinets
• Metric measurement equivalents included throughout
• A companion website with forms and teaching resources for instructors

1
Kitchen History, Research, and Trends

The kitchen and its place in family life have changed throughout history in conjunction with the evolving lifestyles, economic conditions, values, and attitudes of its users. The overall look, feel, location, and relative importance of the kitchen in the home have been emblematic not only of the era, but also of the particular circumstances of the families they served.

So a brief walk through the history of kitchens will help the designer understand the ever-changing and complex interconnection between this room and the various roles it plays in domestic life. Research conducted by various groups has provided valuable guides for designing efficient, functional, and accessible kitchens. As the demographics and attitudes of our society change, so will the kitchen, to keep up with the needs of the users.

1. Learning Objective 1: Describe how evolving lifestyles have affected trends over time.
2. Learning Objective 2: Explain how kitchen design research has contributed to the NKBA Planning Guidelines.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE KITCHEN

The history of the modern kitchen begins with the need for a place of family food preparation, usually centered on a source of heat and light, which was the hearth (fireplace). This source has changed over time, but for ages the open fire in a hearth reigned supreme. It also served as the sole heat source for the home until late in the seventeenth century. This meant that most family living and activities took place in the one room that contained the fireplace.

The first known kitchen separated from the living area was in thirteenth-century Flanders, along the coast of what is now Belgium. Flemish kitchens contained tables on trestles for food preparation. Horizontal boards placed above the table provided a place to store kitchen utensils. These storage elements developed into display dressers used in fifteenth-century Flanders, where the number of shelves on the dresser was an indicator of social rank. Many of these concepts were eventually brought to North America and incorporated into the early colonial kitchens.

The Colonial Kitchen

The colonists in North America brought many ideas for kitchen design from Europe. Although eventually established as a separate room in many homes, the early colonial kitchen was equipped with perhaps the only heat source in the home, a hearth, and it served as the focus of the family activity. Because it was the most comfortable room in the home, the kitchen was often used for family bathing as well.

Role of the Hearth in the Eighteenth-Century Kitchen

The typical eighteenth-century kitchen was large, and often included a 6-foot wide and 4-foot deep walk-in fireplace (Figure 1.1). The fireplace contained massive wrought andirons with racks for toasting bread, spits for cooking meats, and iron hooks for pots, which were transferred into and out of the fire with lug poles. Beehive ovens were built into the sidewall of the hearth and were used for baking. A trestle table or bench, a storage chest, a corner cupboard, and occasionally a separate worktable were included in the kitchen. These early kitchens were dirty, inefficient, and unsafe, especially for the cook. Long skirts would brush up against the hot embers in the fireplace and catch on fire, and as a result, burns became the second most common cause of death among women, second only to childbirth.

Figure 1.1 Colonial kitchens were not only messy places in which to work, but they were also dangerous because the cook was so close to the embers used for cooking.

Photo by Jack E. Boucher. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey or Historic American Engineering Record, HABS VA-1422-7 (CT)

In wealthier households, the kitchen was used only by servants and was often located on the lower level or in a separate building. A summer kitchen—common in the warmer southern colonies, where the heat from cooking was not desirable during warm weather—often consisted of a lean-to or annex to the main house, which kept extra heat out of the house. Eventually, the fireplaces developed a separate chimney, which helped exhaust the excess heat and allowed cooking during hot weather without heating up the house.

Later in the century, wood and coal cast iron stoves, which enclosed the fire and transferred heat through the metal became available. These stoves were less of a fire hazard but provided less heated area for cooking. Benjamin Franklin designed one such stove, which was built to fit into the fireplace.

Most kitchens of the period were enclosed with unadorned wood panels, but by the second quarter of the eighteenth century, paint was used—more as a preservative than for decorative purposes. As paint became more popular, stenciling, marbling, and graining techniques were used on walls, woodwork, and cabinetry to add a decorative touch to the once plain kitchen.

The Modern Kitchen

The modern kitchen has been influenced by two major trends that roughly coincide with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The nineteenth century brought industrialization with social and technological changes. In the twentieth century, standardization surfaced with a focus on work simplification and efficiency.

Houses and the kitchens associated with them changed as the country evolved into an industrialized nation. During this time, numerous new products were developed, and the role of women and family life was redefined. In addition, democracy, joined with the industrial age and the rising middle class, discouraged the formation of a permanent servant class, so live-in household help was less available or often not reliable. This meant that the woman of the home had to take on many new roles and activities to manage the house and its occupants.

The Victorian Kitchen

The nineteenth century brought the Victorian era, which coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom between 1839 and 1901. Victorian kitchens were large and often located in the rear of the house or the basement. Many homes of the wealthy included a summer kitchen behind the main kitchen, and the family often had servants to perform most of the cooking and household chores. The early Victorian kitchens were not very highly decorated and their walls were simply covered with institutional green or cream-colored enamel paint. Later, the kitchen included wainscoting, plate racks, and glass-door cabinets, but the appearance and efficiency of the kitchen was not the focus of the home. These kitchens were not very comfortable or convenient to work in.

The range, sink, and table in the Victorian kitchen were all freestanding pieces. Gas stoves eventually became available, but many cooks still preferred the wood- or coal-burning stoves (Figure 1.2). These large stoves were kept hot 24 hours a day to provide continuous hot water, instant heat for cooking and baking,...