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A Minimally Modern and Modular Kitchenette for Millennials

08.09.18 | By
A Minimally Modern and Modular Kitchenette for Millennials

It seems particularly ironic my friend who is a technologist and founder of the gastronomical virtual reality experience, Project Nourished, has lived in a Downtown Los Angeles industrial space for the last several years sans kitchen. He told me he’s made it work out of necessity, using a combination of a portable inductive cooktop and a utility sink on wheels. I definitely thought of his past predicament as I helped him move last week to a new place outfitted with a legitimate kitchen, thinking how the challenge of cost of rent versus available space can require sacrifices such as his while living in many of the most dense and expensive cities.

Royal College of Art graduate, Yu Li’s portable kitchen concept Assembly addresses this growing need amongst young professionals struggling to meet the desire to cook against the limitations of space. Li envisions an inductive-technology cooking surface nearly as svelte as a first generation iPad, designed to deliver the portable means for cooking, dining, cleaning, and finally hiding away the kitchen into its own carrying case.

Beyond an urban setting, the Assembly presents an appealing cooking/dining solution for car campers/glampers who might prefer its mod-inflected design in comparison to the usual aesthetic attached to camping/adventure gear.

The all-in-one cooking and dining set Assembly is outfitted to serve space-challenged apartment dwellers in cities like New York, London, Tokyo, or anywhere else where a dedicated kitchen isn’t necessarily an expectation or option. Comprised of a modular carrying case containing nearly everything one needs to get cooking for a party of one – inductive cooktop, pot, pan, cutting board/serving tray, utensils, and even a dish drying rack – Li’s design adopts an IKEA-ish simplicity with some smart double-duty features, like the pan handle that converts into serving tongs, or the cutting board that doubles up for serving board.

From Yu Li:

The end users are millennials, young professionals who don’t have sufficient kitchen space…The idea is to trim the original kitchen space down to a few minimal elements so space can be designed simpler, neater and transformed into other purposes to increase the space utilization.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.