The Future of Kitchen Design Revolves Around This Overlooked Feature

Start (not end) your plans here.
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Maybe you’ve realized you don’t have enough pantry shelving to house all your flour or that the island isn’t wide enough to double as a desk. With all this time we’ve been spending at home, bigger has definitely started to look better. But the real question is: Is it smarter? 

Future Facility—a London-based think tank within the design firm Industrial Facility—has come up with a kitchen design called KIT that proves you can accomplish a lot in a small space. The key is starting with the appliances, a feature we usually don’t think about until the cabinetry is in place. All of the appliances in the plan are situated on the floor and only extend to waist height (around 24 inches), providing a sturdy base for the countertop. If the concept were to one day become a reality, customers could opt to add cantilevered shelves to the sides of the appliances, giving them useful wings. 

“The reality is, it’s the appliances that make a kitchen,” says the company’s cofounder, Sam Hecht. “We can fall in love with fancy finishes and endless cabinetry, but this merely satisfies the image of a kitchen rather than its performance and efficiency.” 

stainless steel kitchen
Photography courtesy of Future Facility

Slotting appliances into empty cabinet boxes definitely has its downsides. For starters, measurements aren’t always spot-on. (Take it from Jenny Kaplan, who had to trim down part of her Rosa Portogallo countertops after realizing she didn’t leave enough room for the refrigerator.) Plus putting off purchasing appliances until the very end of a project leaves you with fewer funds to work with, and a subpar range doesn’t necessarily scream dream kitchen.

Don’t get us wrong: There are plenty of important decisions that happen in the eleventh hour. It’s just that picking out a stove should no longer be one of them. 

Introducing Domino’s new podcast, Design Time, where we explore spaces with meaning. Each week, join editor-in-chief Jessica Romm Perez along with talented creatives and designers from our community to explore how to create a home that tells your story. Listen now and subscribe for new episodes every Thursday.