Several years ago, I began experimenting with a new kitchen layout strategy aimed at better integrating family activities and the primary storage/preparation/cooking work centers into one large living space. This new approach revolves around changing where these traditional work centers are placed within an expanded “roomscape” still labeled as a “kitchen.” I call it the “Live-in Kitchen” plan, rather than an “Eat-in Kitchen” or a “Great Room Kitchen.”

To better understand the basic premise of this new approach to design, it’s a good idea to review how the kitchen has evolved. Many of us remember when a kitchen was a walled-off space associated with grease, grime and drudgery. Over the last 30 years, walls have come down, and kitchens have been placed alongside family gathering and activity centers. Professional space planners are moving the kitchen “out of the corner” in these Great Room settings, and placing it in the center of an overall living area.

This “floating” approach to locating the primary work spaces of a residential kitchen allows various people-related activities to be integrated into the actual food-focused space or occur along the perimeters of the space. So – quite simply – rather than people gathering “in” the kitchen, they are gathering “around” the kitchen.

After creating such a space in a concept kitchen for the Jenn-Air exhibit at the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, I wrote about new planning considerations for a “floating” kitchen in a Kitchen & Bath Design News article entitled “Emerging Kitchens Take Center Stage” (February, 2010).

Over the last few months I’ve enjoyed seeing both “real-life” and “conceptual” kitchen plans based on this new way of placing the kitchen in a gathering space.

The t-SHAPED KITCHEN

This new approach to space management was beautifully employed by Chris Novak Berry of brooksBerry Kitchens & Baths of St. Louis, MO, and her co-designer, Emily Castle, in their 2011 NKBA Design Competition “Best Kitchen” award-winning design. Berry and Castle placed a kitchen in the center of a space, allowing the back wall to serve as a two-sided work and storage station (see photo at right).

The key to this solution is rethinking the concept of an island. The island is created with a full or partial wall. The design offers a combination of the traditional “corridor” kitchen (that “floats” in the room) and a secondary one-wall counter and cabinet assembly anchored nearby. We might need a new name for this shape: the “T-Shaped Kitchen”?