
EOOS and Bulthaup presented a groundbreaking new kitchen at ICFF in New York.
One year of fundamental research, an amazing exhibition and a very involved development project with Germans leading kitchen producer later.
I had the opportunity to spend time with Harald Gruendl of EOOS to get deep insights into they process and work. It is save to say that this new work is on a trajectory of the progress made by Margarete Schuette Lihotzky with the Frankfurt kitchen and Gerd Bulthaups original work. It is sad to say that kitchen design has been overtaken by the stylistic driven interior decorating crowd, but has not evolved significantly since Schuette’s work.
Research:
EOOS, the internationally known design office, has redefined the kitchen cosmos with 40 kitchen utensils. EOOS has abandoned the beaten paths of design theory and design history and used ‘poetic analysis’ to describe creative design and use processes. This design philosophy searches for intuitive images, rituals and myths that serve as starting points for EOOS’ design process. Ancient rites meet up with high tech today. EOOS meets the demands of this complex theoretical and practical design starting point with their approach. Kitchen images from different times (wood cuts, paintings, photography, actual objects) are transformed into one uniform shape. All objects therefore seem to have equal rights, first as shadows, but they also have corporeal and material features. This creates a completely new image and text discourse that is independent from time and space. A new design philosophy.
Exhibition:

The Cooked Kitchen located in the Viennese Museum for Applied Arts (MAK). A new kitchen tool cabinet will be the centerpiece of this exhibition. It is a further development of the kitchen tool cabinet, designed by EOOS and produced by bulthaup, first presented at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan in April 2008. Helmut Österreicher (voted “Chef of the Decade” by the Gault Millau panel in 2001) was by EOOS asked to choose the kitchen utensils, which he thought should be included in such a cabinet as well as to place them in the order he considered most practical. This co-work between EOOS and Helmut Österreicher was documented on video. Together with the carpentry workshop of the Viennese Museum for Applied Arts, EOOS made the kitchen tool cabinet, which is now displayed at MAK DESIGN SPACE.
Product:
bulthaup gets its visions from the consistent observation of the living and eating habits of people from all over the world. bulthaup b2 is responsive to modern lifestyles, such as single-person or twoperson households, or even “patchwork families”, and is the perfect kitchen for nomads or pioneers in creating a home, living and thinking. The design was developed in collaboration with the renowned design firm EOOS in Vienna. With their method of “poetical analysis”, the designers take a very special approach to the development of new products. Formative factors of image, ritual and received wisdom are brought together and synthesized. “The result of this cooperation is unconventional, convincing and independent: bulthaup b2 defines the entire kitchen as a changeable system, and is thereby synonymous with the “versatile kitchen of today and tomorrow”, says Gerd Bulthaup.