This efficient and self-sustaining kitchen from studio Gorm (via the wonderful Inhabitat) is a beautiful example of the type of design we should be incorporating into our everyday lives. I love how the simple ideas -- a dishrack draining onto plants! a built-in composter! -- are tucked into a space that hasn't changed as much as it should have since the 1950s.
There are a lot of aspects of this that I would love to see better (or newly!) integrated in my own kitchen. The dish rack reminds me of a cabinet called a tiskikaappi, which are widespread in Finland (and probably Scandinavia beyond, right?). These cabinets are fitted with racks instead of shelves and are placed above a sink so that washed dishes can drain down into it like so:
When we were quickly remodeling our kitchen a couple years ago, I thought wistfully about installing one of these. We have a big window right above our sink, so it seemed like an obvious no-go. If only this plants-under-drainer idea had occurred to me then! It would actually have worked very well, because we already house an overly exuberant basil plant and a scrappy little hydrangea on the countertop under our wall cabinets.
The worm bin composter also looks like a much cleaner solution to the food waste issue than the plastic bin we currently have sitting in our sink cabinet. The plastic bin periodically becomes way too gross to even contemplate, probably due to its not being a proper composting system but instead a mold-incubator that acts as a way-station on the route to the official outdoor compost bin.
Everything about this kitchen looks like a smarter, cleaner version of the jumbled components of my own, and I love designers for creating stuff like this. It just opens my eyes to why certain things do and don't work in my own life. Now if only some designers could create a beautiful, easy-to-install, efficient gray-water system, I could really start to live out my eco home design dreams!
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