>> see the Universal Kitchen on the 2004 PBS series Freedom Machines

In 1993 a team of RISD students and faculty began one of the most ambitious academic projects in the college’s history: to rethink the residential kitchen, an everyday example of poor design. In an unprecedented partnership between academia and industry, more than 100 RISD students in architecture, interior architecture and industrial design set out to challenge 50-year-old assumptions about how kitchens are used, who they’re used by and for what purposes. Over a five-year period, the project was supported by leaders in the industry ranging from Kohl to Frigidaire and Maytag.

Spurred by the knowledge that routine kitchen tasks force people to bend, stoop, reach and lift — repeatedly compensating for weak design in uncomfortable ways — the team began with research. Making a succession of dinners together in typical kitchens, they used careful time/motion studies to document how inefficiencies in kitchen design require more than 400 discrete steps to make a simple dinner. Ultimately, the goal was to redesign the kitchen environment and help as many potential users as possible function independently — from the young to the old.

The team began by literally deconstructing the existing elements of the kitchen, debunking the myth of the kitchen triangle as they blew apart stoves, refrigerators and dishwashers. Students tested existing standards for work heights and reach, researching human factors, demographics and trends. Through their ergonomic studies, they developed the parameters of a key concept they call the “comfort zone” — the area within easy reach for each individual.

A series of studios generated thousands of innovative blue-sky ideas: a utility mouse, continuous wet surfaces, pop-up dishwashers, grey water irrigation systems, countertop waste channels, toe-kick suction, electronic consumption tracking, built-in retractable appliance cords, misting bays, steaming bays, retractable burners and more. In the end, the team conceived of its Universal Kitchen as a “kit of parts,” with interchangeable modular components for refrigeration, cooking, water delivery and storage. Each component is meant to be custom selected and arranged, so that heights and depths can be manually or automatically adjusted to that highly personal, but absolutely crucial “comfort zone.”

After presenting two prototypes at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum’s 1998 show Unlimited by Design, RISD sold exclusive rights to its Universal Kitchen to Maytag Corporation.