The coolest kitchen ever?

May 13, 2006 4:10 PM

Behold: the self-contained circular kitchen. Design coolness for apartment dwellers. "After centuries of conventional kitchen design, the self-contained circular kitchen challenges many of the notions of a normal kitchen, treating it more as an appliance than a dedicated, inflexible room."
posted by CunningLinguist (36 comments total)

Hmmmm...it is cool, but the photos showing the unit in its entirety make me think it would be like having a food kiosk purloined from the local mall foodfair in the middle of your apartment.
posted by moneyjane at 4:21 PM on May 13, 2006

It's cute enough, I suppose, for the type of person who doesn't actually cook in their kitchen.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:28 PM on May 13, 2006

Aren't all kitchens self-contained?
posted by delmoi at 4:32 PM on May 13, 2006

"Aren't all kitchens self-contained?"

You must not have kids.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 4:36 PM on May 13, 2006

Hmm, seems like it would be impossible to actually, I dunno, cook in this. Did anyone else think that someone took the idea of a kitchen island and shrank it down until it was useless?

But then, I'm not the target demographic; my wife has agreed that when we get a house, I can have a large (and well-appointed) kitchen as long as she gets a craft room. At some point, we'll have to figure out how we're paying for said house....
posted by JMOZ at 4:36 PM on May 13, 2006

I think it looks completely practical for cooking in. You're not going to be preparing a banquet, but for a couple of people, it should do a fine job. It's small, yeah, but I've had kitchens with just as little counter space in small apartments, and those didn't even have dishwashers. They have managed to cram a tremendous amount of shelf space in there...
posted by mr_roboto at 4:44 PM on May 13, 2006

I would have liked to have one of these in the teeny weeny on-campus apartments in college. That would have been awesome. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like a space-saving solution for the low-rent districts.

I have a huge kitchen now and I wouldn't trade it for all the shiny red circular gizmos in the world.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:53 PM on May 13, 2006

Yikes! I would have to completely relearn how to cook.

I think it looks completely practical for cooking in. You're not going to be preparing a banquet, but for a couple of people, it should do a fine job.

Maybe if all you eat is simple 2-step things, but it would be completely useless if you cook anything fun. Baking would suck. It would just take all of the joy out of cooking and make it a sterile task. And that would be true if there were 2 of you or 6.
posted by arcticwoman at 5:02 PM on May 13, 2006

I don't really like it.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 5:08 PM on May 13, 2006

"It's cute enough, I suppose, for the type of person who doesn't actually cook in their kitchen."

That's just what I thought. For the person who thinks cooking is heating up some Spaghetti-O's, this may work. For those of us who are a little more serious about cooking, however, it wouldn't do.
posted by Sukiari at 5:17 PM on May 13, 2006

So, if I've got something going on the cooktop and realize that I need an ingredient or utensil stored in the back, I'd have to rotate all my hot food ? And what if I forget to rotate it back? Does the whole thing burn down?
posted by jrossi4r at 5:22 PM on May 13, 2006

No thanks.
posted by fire&wings at 5:23 PM on May 13, 2006

So far you know it in such a way:
Kitchen work-with ways like a marathoner.
This belongs now to the past!

You have no chance to survive cook your food.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:27 PM on May 13, 2006

Is it just me, or does it somehow bring to mind the early sixties? (And I'm thinking there's got to be a place for these.
posted by IndigoJones at 5:28 PM on May 13, 2006

I guess if space was reeeally an issue.

Also, cleaning it could suck.
posted by furiousthought at 5:39 PM on May 13, 2006

There's a lot of people like me who rarely cook at all. It'd be great to not waste that space on a kitchen.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 5:39 PM on May 13, 2006

I do think it's a good idea - there are lots of people in this world who really don't cook much, especially in large cities. They use their kitchens for heating up leftovers and frying the occasional egg. It would be very compact and functional for those people.

But if you were to do any serious cooking, you'd have to have perfectly organized mise en place, or you'd be forever rotating the thing to get stuff from here, there and everywhere unless you left enough room to walk around it. Timing would be hell, if you were trying to chop here, but needed to be stirring over there occasionally. You'd essentially have to prep absolutely everything before you started.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:44 PM on May 13, 2006

Why does everyone think that people who live in apartments don't like to cook or to eat? My mother lives in a good sized apartment right now, three bedrooms, HUGE livingroom, and a tiny little useless kitchen, no dining area in it to speak of.

If they had cut down the living room to a normal size, they would have had lots of room to put in a nice eat-in kitchen. What the hell were the builders thinking? Someone once told me that builders don't put in kitchens because in the 1960s the designs got stuck as those for bachelors (who, being men, obviously didn't cook*), because women live at home and married people with families buy houses. Except that this is a THREE bedroom apartment, in a building filled with families. But the builders just keep sticking with the same inane designs.

so, yeah, this looks like it's for people who think opening a bottle of wine is cooking. Where do you chop vegetables? Roll out pastry? even lay out plates to serve? Also, it already takes up about as much room as my mum's kitchen, with less counter space. If they were looking for really efficient shape, round is not it.

*yes, that is sarcastic
posted by jb at 5:45 PM on May 13, 2006

Got a nasty grease fire? No problem! Just rotate the flaming cooktop away from you and into the back of the unit, close the doors, and RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!
posted by kcds at 5:46 PM on May 13, 2006

Best shape for an efficient kitchen would be like a ship's galley - either U or an alley.

looking more closely - integrated coffee machine? Who uses a coffee machine if they are short on space? A Cafe Tier takes so much less room. This actually looks like it's designed to work in an office, rather than a home.
posted by jb at 5:49 PM on May 13, 2006

I dunno. If you have it in the corner of your apartment, it still takes up a certain amount of room. I suspect a well-utilized corner with appliances, counter, and cupboards would be a more efficient use of the space. Especially if you put a table and chair in there too, which you might use for more than just cooking and eating.

Personally, I'd like to see this thing turned inside out, so I could step inside and cook. Then I leave, and it turns into a dishwasher that takes care of the counter, sink, and floor while I go cruising around in my flying car.
posted by maniabug at 5:50 PM on May 13, 2006

So not the coolest kitchen ever. A regular kitchen would have to be pretty small and hard to get to to be more dedicated and inflexible than this dedicated and inflexible column of appliances.

It looks way too hard to actually use efficiently. And it's ugly.

I am a basket of positivity today.
posted by Foaf at 6:02 PM on May 13, 2006

"help ... i went to bed last night and my lazy susan swallowed up my kitchen!"
posted by pyramid termite at 6:17 PM on May 13, 2006

I made the best meal ever but was so dizzy that I couldn't eat it.
posted by furtive at 6:32 PM on May 13, 2006

I love to cook, and while this is not a lot of space, I have made lots of fun dishes in half the space. (Apartment in France with two burners, and less than 3 suare feet of counter space + a small table. Made mussels marinara, lamb chops, latkes, big breakfasts, and all kinds of things.) As nice as it is, you do not need a huge kitchen with a double oven to make great food.
posted by Nothing at 6:41 PM on May 13, 2006

No need to plan...

It doesn't seem very practical. What if you want to use the refrigerator, sink, countertop, and the stove at the same time? Say, to get the carrots out of the refrigerator, wash them off, slice them up, and put them into a pot. Or, for that matter, if you just want to rinse out that pot, and put it into the dishwasher.

It seems to me you never just use one part of the kitchen at a time. You'll be spinning that thing like Eddie Murphy at the prayer wheels in that movie The Golden Child.
posted by LeLiLo at 8:46 PM on May 13, 2006

It's a mutant lazy susan! I love it!
posted by wendell at 8:46 PM on May 13, 2006

What if you want to use the refrigerator, sink, countertop, and the stove at the same time?

Then you are Kali of the many arms, and can just have your Thuggee disciples cook for you.

Or you are a Centauri male cooking with his genitals
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:49 PM on May 13, 2006

Well, some of the best parties I've been to ended up in the kitchen; why would you want to remove that possibility?
posted by sharpener at 11:02 PM on May 13, 2006

You'll be spinning that thing like Eddie Murphy at the prayer wheels in that movie The Golden Child.

I said I-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i need a kniiiiiiiife, pleeeeeeeease!
posted by Dreama at 11:42 PM on May 13, 2006

Metafilter: now older and sounding like Dad.
posted by srboisvert at 2:13 AM on May 14, 2006

My main dislikes about this:

• Cooking produces steam and greasy vapors, which would settle nicely in the confined spaces in the back and in the corners. How do you clean the back of this thing if it's not free-standing?
• There's just not enough workspace for cutting, cleaning and preparing the dishes, and everything is awkwardly shaped - the edges curve away from you. When have you last worked on a surface shaped like that?
• If you want to take something out of the fridge or reach a cupboard that's currently in the back, do you rotate the still boiling pots to the back? What if you leave a pan handle sticking out and a messy half-prepared meal goes sliding down the backside of this giant closet?

Nope, that thing is not for me. And I don't even consider myself a gourmet cook (but I can take raw, unprepared vegetables and meat and turn them into quite tasty meals; a skill that seems more and more uncommon). I personally like the idea of rotating cupboards (what you look for is invariably in the back behind two cast-iron skillets), but taking a good concept and applying it to simply everything is overdoing it.
posted by PontifexPrimus at 3:30 AM on May 14, 2006

"hansel, gretel - do you want to take a merry go round ride?"
posted by pyramid termite at 5:58 AM on May 14, 2006

"The advantages of the rotating central core offered many advantages" -Averbeck
posted by wumpus at 9:21 AM on May 14, 2006

So are the drains for the sink and dishwasher on a rotating pipe or something? What about the water lines? I bet that thing leaks like a monkey fudger.
posted by bjork24 at 9:35 AM on May 14, 2006

bjork, I was wondering about that. I wonder if the plumbing works similarly to that in the rotating house which was a FPP in February.
posted by JMOZ at 11:39 AM on May 14, 2006