Minimalist kitchen with clean lines – perfect for singles
Upcycling with style: Instead of opting for a new kitchen in his small city apartment, Thijs decided to completely overhaul his existing kitchen units. With new, understated cupboard doors and elegant BORA appliances, the Dutchman has created a minimalist small kitchen that makes a big impact.
Who’s cooking in this kitchen?
A healthy and sustainable lifestyle is really important to Thijs. He lives alone in The Hague, is vegan, and cooks almost every day, using fresh, local and seasonal organic produce. That includes vegetables he has grown himself on his allotment near the city. His desire to live sustainably is also evident in his professional life – the 34 year old runs a small shop selling shoes and clothes made from vegan and recycled materials. What’s more, his apartment is only a five minute walk from the shop, which is why he jumped at the chance to move into the 48m2 rental property and part of the reason why his CO2 footprint is so impressively low.
Tiny space, big on design
The old kitchen units were still in good condition so Thijs decided to keep them. However, the existing kitchen didn’t meet his needs from either a technical or design perspective. He therefore decided to modernise the space and turn it into a professional kitchen studio with all the features he wanted. In other words, he went for some classy upcycling. The cupboards and drawers got new handleless doors and fronts, coordinating perfectly with the minimalist, functional design of the rest of the apartment. The kitchen also got a technical makeover with branded appliances. Thijs was not just concerned with functionality – the design and quality of the electrical goods was also important to him. Given his focus on sustainable living, he wanted his kitchen to be as durable as possible as well as looking good.
When choosing a hob, Thijs therefore went straight for the highly elegant BORA S Pure. Completely streamlined with the work surface, it fits perfectly into the clean lines of the small apartment, where space is at a premium. The eye-catching units with their reflective surface help the room appear bigger and more spacious. The fantastic space-saving oven therefore fits perfectly with the overall kitchen concept. Thijs, with his love of clean lines, also rated the simplicity with which the hob is operated and how it blends into the background so completely as to be almost unnoticeable when in standby mode. The asymmetrical placement of the air inlet nozzle, together with the extractor system, emphasises not only the sophisticated design – four cooking plates make excellent use of the 60cm deep hob space and make it easy to select different areas of the hob, depending on your cooking requirements. Although space was at a premium, no compromised needed to be made when it came to performance. A super-quiet extractor is incorporated into the impressively-designed space, effectively removing steam and cooking odours before they have the chance to drift into the rest of the apartment. What’s more, the low installation height of the entire extractor system leaves lots of storage space in the unit below for kitchen utensils and, thanks to the downdraft extractor, there’s also room at head height for even more shelf and cupboard storage.
The most-used appliance in Thijs’ kitchen is the brand-new BORA X BO steam oven. And no wonder, since steamed vegetables – super easy to prepare and delicious cooked in the X BO – are the vegan’s favourite thing to eat. The decision to go for a combined appliance, with both steam oven and traditional oven, was straightforward, saving him space with two appliances in one. Thijs can enjoy the benefits of both ovens at the same time, preparing healthy, tasty and carefully chosen food, even when he is just cooking for one.
The steam oven doesn’t only make it easy to prepare delicious, healthy food. The X BO also saves on time. Since it’s just five minutes on foot from his apartment to the shop. Thijs can prepare fresh ingredients for lunch in the morning, before the shop opens, and pop it into the stem oven. Thanks to the oven’s timer function, the home-cooked meal is ready for him to enjoy when he gets home for lunch.
