Flexible Cooking
A portable cooking system for compact living supervised by Electrolux
Humans evolved from a nomadic lifestyle to have settled down with permanent housing. This caused the cooking to be allocated into a fixed kitchen space. Through globalization and technological developments, many people live a more flexible lifestyle nowadays and move frequently. Some people cook less and only reheat takeout food, others have very limited living space. All of these people have a shared need for flexible cooking spaces that don’t fit the standardized kitchen designs. This industrial design project shows the development of a product family that fits into the new, flexible kitchen space. The system consists of a small pot, a pan, an oven that also serves as a big pot, a hot plate and a battery pack that can be attached to the hotplate. The main design challenges that were solved during this project included stackability of the components, creating an oven grid that is accessible from the top, detachable handles for the cookware, portability and cable management. The system can completely replace a big stovetop oven, while saving space, energy and money. This thesis was supervised by Electrolux, which largely inspired the aesthetics of the design.
