Virginia Tech Leads in Kitchen Design Education

Blacksburg, VA— As the first of the Baby Boomers gets set to retire this year, kitchen designers have found requests for products and designs suited for this age group increasing. In the current economic climate, more homeowners are seeking to age-in-place, and it will depend on a new generation of kitchen designers to keep them healthy at home.

The professors of the Center for Real Life Kitchen Design at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University unveiled late last year the stunning renovation to their workspace; a combination of kitchens and class space designed to give the kitchen and home designers of the future a hands-on look at the process.

Life at the Center

The Center, in its current incarnation as the locus of Virginia Tech’s residential kitchen design program, formally opened in 1998. Kathleen Parrott, Ph.D., CKE, a professor of housing and 20-year Virginia Tech veteran, is the coordinator of the undergraduate program here at the University, which is accredited by the National Kitchen & Bath Association.

“This is a follow-up to our first renovation in the mid 1990s,” she says. “Our program in kitchen and bath design was growing and we began to ask ourselves, ‘Can we make the space function more broadly for our program?’ At the time, ours was an overtaxed, multifunctional space. While we were able to switch out product rather easily, the layout itself, the cabinetry and other key elements had been in place since the 1960s.”

Parrott cites the Center’s mission as: “[fostering] educational opportunities related to the demonstration and application of products, materials and technologies in residential kitchen and bath design.”

The facility is used for a variety of classes. General design classes have students come in and evaluate how well the spaces work.

“They’re comparing them against the NKBA industry guidelines; they’re looking at the arrangement of spaces; they’re measuring spaces. We actually have them cook here so that they can gauge how much space it takes to do certain activities,” says Parrott.

JoAnn Emmel, Ph.D. teaches residential technology classes in the Center, where students thoroughly investigate and study the equipment. They test everything from how well refrigerators maintain their temperature to how evenly cakes brown in a convection oven.

According to Parrott: “If they’re going to work with appliances, specify appliances or go into the appliance industry, they’ll come out of here with a good understanding.” All students in the undergraduate program are required to take two technology courses.

Graduate students also do work in the space including research and evaluative studies. Additionally, the Center has an established public education program called “Explore Your Dream Kitchen.” The seminar targets homeowners who are either readying themselves to undertake a major remodel or are planning a new home.

“We teach them the basics of kitchen planning and the guidelines. Then we have them cook meals in our kitchens to try out the different appliances and materials that we’ve taught them about,” says Parrott. “A lot of people who come to this are remodeling or building the home they plan to retire in.”

She estimates that roughly a third of participants in the seminar are working on their retirement homes.

“Since we use the kitchens extensively as classroom and lab space, it’s important that they illustrate for our students the latest and the greatest,” says Emmel.

“In the 10 years the center has been open, many styles have come and gone. We with our donors, particularly the appliance companies, so that, as we have students, continuing education classes and community events here, we’re not showing off outdated technology or products that are no longer being manufactured,” says Parrott.