Opinion


opinion // Ian Palmer Has design lost its spark?


Kitchen designer and author, Ian Palmer questions whether a lack of ‘iconic’ design launches mean that the sector has lost its creative spark or whether, in fact, inspirational design is actually all around us...


I


was asked recently why the kitchen industry doesn’t seem to produce iconic designs anymore. The original fitted kitchen – the Frankfurt


kitchen (pictured) – is almost a century old. Rightly or wrongly, because in 1926 the kitchen was very much deemed the woman’s room of the home, the design and layout of the Frankfurt kitchen was aimed at improving women’s lives – and as form follows function, its character, eclectic yet somehow homogenous, came out of utility. It was domestic engineering, for optimum


efficiency. It was a piece, too, for replication in cookie-cutter apartments. Similarly original, I’d say, is the all-metal English


Rose kitchen, which came about when WW2 aircraft manufacturers were looking for post-war work. An English Rose kitchen is not of a piece but modular and its uniqueness is the cabinet profile.


Aesthetic influence If


there’s anything approaching the social


importance of the Frankfurt kitchen in recent decades, it’s accessible kitchens. The intelligent mechanisms can transform lives, but we’re not going to see these designs on catwalks. In 2013, an Italian-born designer exhibited the “million-pound kitchen” in London. The money went on materials like crystal and copper. But as a room design, its independent elements – an oven bank, a fridge bank, an island – reflected trends already well-established in kitchen design. Its biggest innovation, however, was the price. I’ve been told that Siematic missed a trick by not patenting the original “gola” true-handleless


certain Italian and German brands, like Poggenpohl. You walk around what looks like just a cube of stone to find that it’s actually a well thought out and functional island; you slide a concrete panel aside that reveals a bank of ovens or a sink. Boffi takes this concept even further into a


loft-cum-factory-styled environment. These looks lean heavily on sliding and pocket door


technology, which will surely be the next thing. But again, we see the aesthetic depending on the technical aspect of design.


Inspiration strikes


The next iconic design might be just around the corner. I can’t imagine what it might be – but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?


"


principle, and that its new version, mitred with integrated lighting, is an attempt to correct that. True-handleless kitchen furniture is a revolution, and although far from new, is still finding its way into the UK market, along with its technical needs. Also, from mainland Europe comes a neo- brutalist, secret kitchen look we associate with


March 2025 kbbreview


Iconic design doesn’t announce itself so much as it’s announced to us. Because every kitchen is a new start, somebody might come up with something inspired anywhere, at any time. The key word in the original question is ‘seems’. Could it be we’re actually surrounded by iconic


designs, but we don’t always get to hear about it? We’re salespeople. We design not for galleries,


but for our domestic clients, with their individual tastes, spaces and budgets. We are sales-led and client-led, not always solely design-led, and few enjoy such status that we can sell something truly original on the strength of our name. There is an upside though: the purchaser of iconic designs like the Eames chair doesn’t get to say, “it was designed for me”, while every kitchen buyer does. Or perhaps we just need to be patient? The English Rose kitchen came twenty years after the Frankfurt. The next iconic design might be just around the corner. I can’t imagine what it might be – but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? kbbr


What do you think? We always want to hear your views and opinions, so email editor@kbbreview.com to be featured in a future issue


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