"+ARTESIO instantly tells you: This is where I'm at home"

Milan, 14.04.2010

Mr. Teherani, creating the new Poggenpohl kitchen was new ground for you. How did you approach the kitchen as a design subject?
Hadi Teherani: "For me, the kitchen is a living space within the home environment – not a workshop, not a laboratory and certainly not an ancillary room. Only when the drama of cooking begins does the stage come into view. What's important to me with this kitchen is the whole home, what it's like to live there. As an architect, I am used to deciphering the problems of the task and its practical complexities in order to find a lasting solution. It's just the same designing a product. No matter how complex the job, it's always the simplest solution that wins. The way in which space is experienced and appeals to the emotions is determined by the overall impact of architecture and design. Every single detail, as small as it may be, can either spoil everything or, in combination with all of the other stimuli, create a perfectly balanced composition. The fundamental task of the architect and designer is really to address every issue and find an answer to every problem – long-term and on a lasting basis, not just for the sake of visual impression but for the individual." 

Which design principles from architecture did you take into account when you designed the kitchen?
Hadi Teherani: "As a designer too, I adopt the same all-embracing approach as I do as an architect. This is why the targets I set go that much further. The architectural puzzle is far more complex. It's not the beauty of an individual property that's important for me, but giving space the right atmosphere and mood. This is why solutions fall short that only do justice to individual problems. And it is why design aficionados are often disappointed when the impact of the new property fails to materialise in their personal environment. With the home as people's form of existence, that's what counts most. Then, just being able to cook in a kitchen is not enough."

When you look at the result today: What's typically Teherani about the kitchen?
Hadi Teherani: "This kitchen creates an exciting living space with three-dimensional transitions and boundaries that can be defined by the individual. It's somewhere you can also read a book or paint a picture in. Right down to table and chair, the entire kitchen with its innovative style is so easy to live in that kitchen is almost the wrong word for it. Using different element sizes, material qualities and colours, the kitchen provides a composition that embraces every space and fulfils every expectation – even through to the ceiling as the kitchen upper interior surface. It creates an additional means of facilitating the inner world of an all-embracing architecture. In other words: The kitchen itself is space-creating architecture."

How do you see the future of the kitchen? Will there still be kitchens in 20 or 30 years as we know them today?
Hadi Teherani: "The trend towards individualised living, free from set structures and specific functions, will continue. Whether sleeping, working, cooking, receiving guests, exercising or taking a shower, the focus will remain on the vision of a home liberated from all constraints. The more ingeniously this flexibility is provided through easy-to-change furniture systems the less it will be necessary to define subliminal functional boundaries through architectural means. This is precisely the goal I set myself in architecture. And for me personally, it is why I will start by implementing this concept in my apartment in Cologne's 'Crane Houses'."