Kitchen and Bath Design Principles

Elements, Form, Styles

Nancy Wolford, Ellen Cheever

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118715642
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Innenarchitektur

The industry standard, full-color guide to practical kitchen and bath design

Kitchen and Bath Design Principles is The National Kitchen and Bath Association's complete guide to uniting function and style in these important rooms. This full-color guide is heavily illustrated, with a revised layout and graphic design that presents information more clearly for visual learners. The updated second edition has been expanded to adhere more closely to the standards of interior design, including new information on unity, proportion, scale, and variety, plus a new glossary to clarify unfamiliar terms. Stylistic themes remain a major component, with emphasis on the architecture, furniture, styles, and fashions of each era, and all technical and aesthetic information is presented in clear, concise language. The companion website features a teacher's guide and image bank that facilitate use in the classroom, providing additional examples of design principles in action.

The National Kitchen and Bath Association established the standard guidelines for safe and effective kitchen and bath design, and this book is the complete guide to incorporating code and aesthetics from the very beginning. Function is just as important as style in these rooms, so Kitchen and Bath Design Principles teaches readers to:

• Apply the elements and principles of design to real-life situations
• Discover how best to apply the tools of design in daily business practice
• Explore the global and cultural influences reflected in popular stylistic themes
• Translate the aesthetics of an era into a workable theme for a kitchen or bath

To best serve clients, designers must learn to meet all codes, regulations, and expectations with a balance of substance and style. Kitchen and Bath Design Principles is the industry standard reference, from the industry-leading provider of kitchen and bath design education.

1
A Brief History of Kitchen and Bathroom Design

It is important for the kitchen and bath designer to understand the historical background of the design of the residential kitchen and bathroom in the United States and how it evolved. These spaces are often taken for granted as being primarily functional, necessary, and convenient rooms that have always been indoors, as they have been in most Western homes for a century or more. Fewer and fewer customers or designers can remember having or using primitive outdoor spaces for these functions, except when hiking or camping or in extremely remote areas. Therefore, giving thought to the actual design of these spaces is a relatively new concept, yet it is an opportunity for the expertise of the kitchen and bath designer.

• Learning Objective 1: Describe the development and evolution of the design of the residential kitchen.
• Learning Objective 2: Describe the development and evolution of the design of the residential bathroom.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE KITCHEN

For many centuries of recorded history, the kitchen was outside or in a separate building apart from the primary home to protect the family’s dwelling from fires. The kitchen eventually became attached to the dwelling but was considered by most to be strictly a separate functional work space rather than one that required designing, aesthetic considerations, or integration into the rest of the house. This was especially true for the wealthy, who often had staff handling the meal preparation and cleanup. Aesthetics, close or convenient location to eating/dining space, or ease of function were not considered, nor were they thought to be important. In Colonial America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and into the nineteenth century, the kitchen became more integrated into the home, more a center of family life with the open flame from the fireplace used to warm the home and family as well as prepare the food. The kitchen of the Rundlet-May House (1807) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, features an enclosed fireplace—an early forerunner of the modern kitchen stove (see Figure 1.1.)

FIGURE 1.1 Historical kitchen

Courtesy of the Society of Preservation of New England Antiquities Photo by David Bohl

The idea of a well-planned, well-designed kitchen was first talked about in the 1920s when Hoosier cabinets were introduced by the Hoosier Company. Later, Cornell University and the US Department of Agriculture Research Station in Beltsville, Maryland, began research on functional kitchen planning. This research continued after World War II by the Small Homes Council of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, the room still remained primarily a workroom, where function (food preparation, storage, and cleanup), mass production of cabinetry, and ease of cleaning, rather than aesthetics or other uses, were the primary considerations (see Figure 1.2).

FIGURE 1.2 1940s kitchen

Courtesy of Kohler Company

Immediately following World War II, several leading midwestern and eastern US cabinet companies introduced color and more wood for cabinetry, which gradually was becoming built in, as well as decorative hardware and a variety of accent cabinet pieces. Built-in appliances and fixtures were introduced in the late 1950s and 1960s, in a myriad of styles and colors. These avant-garde kitchens were widely shown in high-fashion magazines, such as Town & Country and Vogue, as well as the many home design shelter publications that were popular and widely read by consumers (see Figure 1.3).

FIGURE 1.3 1960s kitchen

Courtesy of Sub Zero

In the 1970s, a new design concept was introduced in several well-respected shelter magazines—the great room. Walls were removed between the kitchen and adjacent living spaces, bringing the kitchen out of the strictly separate functional/work-oriented category, to...