Rich people are having a couture cooling moment. The new status symbol, according to the New York Times, is an invisible fridge. Rich people buy enormous $15,000 Sub-Zero fridges and then stick panels on them that match their custom cabinetry. The result? As if by magic, it looks like there are no appliances in the house.
There are cooling drawers, too. The drawers are mostly built into kitchen islands, although it’s increasingly common for the ultra-rich to have them installed in bathrooms for temperature-controlled face creams.
“Most people put four – or possibly six” cooling cubbies in the kitchen, the Times reports, filling each with various drinks. There are increasingly few freezers in the homes of the rich, although sometimes, you can find a tiny one for ice cream. Apparently, frozen meals are a bit passé. “Freezing food is becoming less and less fashionable. People want to eat more organically,” interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard tells the Times. It is a stance one can only take today if they are is very, very sure they can afford non-decaying food tomorrow.
I doubt the very wealthy are asking for tiny freezers and hidden refrigerators because they are on the side of big bottled beverage and big rot. Probably, they just think it looks nice.
Designers like Shannon Wolcack, who owns a design firm in West Hollywood, agrees. Why does the kitchen need to host its own persistent optical illusion? “Kitchens used to be concealed. It had a door. That was where you had all your appliances. It was like the work space. And now, kitchens are more of a lifestyle. You want to make it pretty and seamless,” she tells the Times.
Is there anything inherently wrong with sticking a panel on your fridge so that it looks like a cabinet? Of course not. But the history of kitchen cabinets and the appliances tucked in snugly between them is not pretty or seamless – and it’s still stewing.
A practical theory of kitchen design didn’t emerge until the 20th century. Until then, kitchens were just random bits of furniture and a stove shoved in attics, basements and poorly ventilated back rooms. Architects didn’t care about kitchens because their high-end clients’ kitchens were filled with servants.
After the first world war, the architects behind New Frankfurt, in Germany, were tasked with finding a way to build affordable housing that fostered community and equality by design. This time, the architects decided to include kitchens in their world building. Grete Schüette-Lihotzky, the first female architect in Austria, was in charge of the kitchens. In a 1997 interview before her 100th birthday, she said: “Before I conceived the Frankfurt kitchen in 1926, I never cooked myself. At home in Vienna my mother cooked, in Frankfurt I went to the Wirtshaus. I…
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