The idea of the kitchen triangle has dominated the kitchen industry for many years. It is formed around the three major appliances: cooktop, sink and fridge.Kitchens used to be closed off and accommodated only one person. This worked reasonably well when only one family member was responsible for kitchen duties, but add another person sharing the workload, and suddenly people arc colliding and crossing paths as they individually move between the three points.Modem families hang out together in the kitchen for multiple purposes, making the "triangle” obsolete. For example, on a busy weeknight between work or school and extracurricular activities, a typical family is usually working on several tasks at the same time in the kitchen: one partner is propping a quick meal, the other is unloading the dishwasher; one child is grabbing a quick snack while the other is parked at the island doing homework. This scenario would have wreaked havoc on the dated kitchen triangle design.
WHAT IS THE KITCHEN TRIANGLE?
But lifesty;es have changed, so too must kitchen design...
BYE, BYE KITCHEN TRIANGLE,
HELLO ZONE!
ESSENTIAL KITCHEN
ESSENTIAL KITCHEN I: THE KITCHEN TRIANGLE
W W W. B E Y O N DY O U R S C A L E . C O M
BYE, BYE KITCHEN TRIANGLE, HELLO ZONE!
The idea of the kitchen triangle has dominated the kitchen industry for many years. It
is formed around the three major appliances: cooktop, sink and fridge.
Kitchens used to be closed off and accommodated only one person. This worked
reasonably well when only one family member was responsible for kitchen duties, but
add another person sharing the workload, and suddenly people arc colliding and
crossing paths as they individually move between the three points.
Modem families hang out together in the kitchen for multiple purposes, making the
"triangle” obsolete. For example, on a busy weeknight between work or school and
extracurricular activities, a typical family is usually working on several tasks at the
same time in the kitchen: one partner is propping a quick meal, the other is unloading
the dishwasher; one child is grabbing a quick snack while the other is parked at the
island doing homework. This scenario would have wreaked havoc on the dated
kitchen triangle design.
ESSENTIAL KITCHEN I: THE KITCHEN TRIANGLE
W W W. B E Y O N DY O U R S C A L E . C O M
The solution is the zone design! When we design in zones, we are compartmentalizing
discrete activities or functions while accommodating both individual and multiple
users.
The kitchen is divided into what we like to call the “work" and “non- work" areas —
the work areas being the cooking and cleanup zones and the non-work areas being
for storage (both food and non-consumables), seating, entertaining and auxiliary
family work.
Prep Zone
We designated the countertop areas near our range as our prep zone, since we can
easily move our prepped ingredients to the cooking zone. In our case, our prep zone
overlaps with our cooking and putting away zones.
This is f