As part of a satellite event for the Venice Biennale, MVRDV have designed a fully transparent kitchen. Each of the units and shelves is transparent, as well as the tap, sink area and worktops. The installation takes the typical modern day modular kitchen and looks at progressing the typology to improving the culinary experience and challenging the immense, yet generic, kitchen industry.
“If we imagine everything is transparent clear and clean, doesn’t it mean that the only thing that is colourful and visible is our food,” said MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas. “Doesn’t it then imply that we are encouraged to love the food, in that way, and that maybe it even becomes more healthy, if not sexy?”
Transparent surfaces, shelves, cupboards, taps and utensils come together to give a new insight into food production, storage, and the processes that go on in our kitchens. Instead of hiding both the ugly and beautiful sides of food preparation, the Infinity Kitchen exposes all in a way to give more control to the user who can now monitor everything. MVRDV’s design aims to act as a showcase to test the individual elements in the kitchen, visitors to the exhibition will be able to see how, through their invisibility, the entire kitchen catalogue functions.
“I see this as part of a wider dream, this kitchen. It is part of an environment, if not a city, that is transparent and therefore accessible.” Says Winy Maas, “Imagine if not only our kitchens were transparent, but the walls through to the neighbour and the next neighbour even. This would create infinite perspectives in our cities. It would make within our claustrophobic environments possibly a view, into the direction of the mountains or the sea.”
MVRDV’s push for this vision has already materialised in recent projects such as Crystal Houses (previously featured by urdesign here), a traditional façade built entirely from glass in Amsterdam, and an office with all glass interiors, furniture and equipment in Hong Kong which will be opened on the 1st June 2016.
The Kitchen Home Project is an initiative which looks to imagine the next step of our living environments, taking the accepted norms of today and pushing these to find new and better solutions.
The Infinity Kitchen made its debut at the Venice Architecture Biennale, as part of the Kitchen Home Project – which explores the future of the domestic environment – and will remain on display until 30 September 2016 in Università IUAV di Venezia Ca’tron.
all images © MVRDV