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916

. . . FARMHOUSE KICHEN ( I 39) and COOKING LAYOUT (I 84)

give the overall design of the kitchen, and its workspace, indoor sunlight (128) makes sure of sunshine in the kitchen. But to help create these larger patterns, and to make the kitchen as warm and beautiful as possible, it is worth taking a great deal of care placing the counter and its windows.

Dark gloomy kitchens are depressing. The kitchen needs the sun more than the other rooms, not less.

Look how beautiful the workspace in our main picture is. Nearly the whole counter is lined with windows. The work surface is bathed in light, and there is a sense of spaciousness all around. There is a view out, an air of calm.

A gloomy kitchen.

Compare it with this gloomy kitchen. There is no natural light on the work counter, the cabinets are a clutter; it is a shabby experience to work there—to work below a cabinet, facing a wall with artificial light in the middle of the day.

This gloomy kitchen is typical of many thousands of kitchens in modern houses. It happens for two reasons. First, people often place kitchens to the north, because they reserve the south for living rooms and then put the kitchen in the left over areas. And it happens, secondly, when the kitchen is thought of as

BUILDINGS

an “efficient” place, only meant for the mechanical cooking operations. In many apartments, efficiency kitchens are even in positions where they get no natural light at all. But, of course, the arguments we have presented in farmhouse kitchen (139) for making the kitchen a living room, not merely a machine-shop, change all this.

Therefore:

sun

Place the main part of the kitchen counter on the south and southeast side of the kitchen, with big windows around it, so that sun can flood in and fill the kitchen with yellow light both morning and afternoon.

windows

Give the windows a view toward a garden or the area where children play—windows overlooking life (192). If storage space is tight, you can build open shelves for bowls and plates and plants right across the windows and still let in the sun— open shelves (200). Build the counter as a special part of the room, integral with the building structure, able to take many modifications later—thickening the outer walls (21 i). Use warm colors (250) around the window to soften and warm the sunlight. . . .

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200 OPEN SHELVES*

919

. . . within the thick walls (197), especially around the

FARMHOUSE KITCHEN ( I 39) and WORKSPACE ENCLOSURE (183), but possibly throughout the building, there is a need for shelves. This pattern helps you decide exactly where you want them and how they shall be organized. Mary Louise Rogers first made the pattern explicit for us.

Cupboards that are too deep waste valuable space, and it always seems that what you want is behind something else.

It is easy to think that you have good storage in a room or in a building just because you have enough closets, cupboards, and shelves. But the value of storage depends as much on the ease of access as on the amount. An enormous amount of cupboard space in a place where no one can get to it is not very useful. It is useful when you can find the things which you have put away at a glance.

This means, essentially, that except for bulk storage (145), things should be stored on open shelves, “one deep.” Then you can see them all. It means, in effect, that you are flattening out the total storage all over the walls—instead of having it in solid lumps, hidden, and hard to reach.

The need for open storage is most obvious in kitchens. In badly planned kitchens, the shelves are filled with things three or four items deep, sometimes stacked on top of each other, and something is always in the way of what you need. But in well-planned kitchens, all storage is one item deep. Shelves are one can deep, glasses are stored one row deep, pots and pans are hung one deep on the wall; for small jars and spices there are special spice shelves that hold the items just one deep.

We think this property is common to all convenient storage. A family’s most prized possessions, gifts, whether for the kitchen or any place else in the house, are hidden away when they arc stored in cupboards and the back shelves of closets. Openly stored, one deep, these things are beautiful around the house.

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200 OPEN SHELVES
Ofen shelves across a window.

Many forms of storage can be one-deep: swinging cabinets that have shelves inside tire doors; pegboards for pots and pans; tool racks. It is even possible to create narrow open shelves in front of windows. When things are just one deep, there is still enough light coming in to make the window useful.

Therefore:

Cover the walls with narrow shelves of varying depth but always shallow enough so that things can be placed on them one deep—nothing hiding behind anything else.

one item deep
open shelves

J

•5* ❖

At waist height put in an extra deep shelf for plates, phonograph, TV, boxes, displays, treasures—waist-high shelf (201). Mark the open shelves along with all the other deep spaces in the walls—thickening the outer wall (211). . . .

921

20 1 WAIST-HIGH SHELF

. . . anywhere where there are open shelves, and around any room which tends to accumulate potted plants, books, plates, bits of paper, boxes, beautiful vases, and little things you have picked up along your travels, there is a need for space where these things can lie undisturbed, without making the room a mess—

THICK WALLS (l97), OPEN SHELVES (200).

In every house and every workplace there is a daily “traffic” of the objects which are handled most. Unless such things are immediately at hand, the flow of life is awkward, full of mistakes; things are forgotten, misplaced.

The essence of this problem lies in the phrase “at hand.” This is literally true and needs to be interpreted as such. When a person reaches for something, his hands are roughly at waist height. When there are surfaces here and there, around the rooms and passages and doors, which are at waist height, they become natural places to leave things and later pick them up. Pocket change, pictures, open books, an apple, a package, a newspaper, the day’s mail, a reminder note: these things are at hand on a waist high shelf. When there are no such surfaces, then things cither get put away and are then forgotten and lost, or they are in the way and must continually be cleared aside.

Furthermore, the things that tend to collect on waist high shelves become a natural, evolving kind of display of the most ordinary things—the things that are most immediately a part of one’s life. And since for each person these things will vary, the waist high shelf helps a room become unique and personal, effortlessly.

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Therefore:

Build waist-high shelves around at least a part of the

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main rooms where people live and work. Make them long, 9 to 15 inches deep, with shelves or cupboard underneath. Interrupt the shelf for seats, windows, and doors.