Dynamic Space Planning in Kitchen Layouts

If you came to our first seminar, you are already familiar with the concept of Kitchen Zones as the new way of kitchen space planning.

The kitchen zone concept is focused on in Blum's Dynamic Space planning principles.  

The kitchen is essentially divided into 5 zones:

1.  Consumables

2.  Non-Consumables

3.  Cleaning

4.  Preparation

5.  Cooking

Each zone is task-oriented.  The goal is to have everything you need nearby when performing various tasks.  For example, food prep often involves chopping vegetables, rolling dough, cleaning produce, discarding waste, measuring ingredients, etc.  So you would want to have cutting boards, knives, a wastebasket (or compost bin), measuring cups, and ideally a prep sink nearby.

Thinking about your kitchen in terms of how you perform each task is a great way to get started with the layout planning.

It is also important to consider the connection of one zone to another.  For example, to begin prepping food you need to get the food from the storage area (Consumables), so it's important for the Consumables and Preparations zones to be close to each other.  After prepping food you typically would head to the cooktop or oven, so the Cooking Zone is nearby.  And once you are done with prep, the dishes used need to go to the Cleaning zone.  From what I am describing here, it becomes apparent that the Preparation Zone is actually a central zone that needs to be convenient to all the other zones.  

For more information on Blum's Dynamic Space planning guidelines, see their website.