Kinder Kitchen Bermondsey.

Interior Design and Site Management, Kinder Kitchen Café, London, Bermondsey (UK).

Kinder Kitchen, which combines the German word for children (Kinder) with the English word for Kindness (to the planet) is conceived as a place away from our domestic kitchens. After a year of lockdowns, the design intention was to create an intense, colourful and fun yet calm spatial atmosphere where one could be with others once again.

An arched partition was designed to create a main café seating area away from the bustle in the kitchen. Instead of building a wall and then building furniture, the partition is effectively doorway, food hatch, prep area, storage space, coffee area and light-giver; ribbed glass in the upper panels fill the kitchen with gentle daylight, creating a workspace that avoids a dingy ‘back-space’ for those working in the kitchen day in day out. Integrated lighting creates a toned-down mood in the main space in the evening. The assemblage of all these features in one element also led to a drastic reduction in the overall materials needed. The plywood structure was clad with Forbo desktop with a gentle mint-green, rose and pistachio colour pallet and hardwearing, utilitarian quarry tiles that would permit the kitchen to expand in the future, should it need to. The seating area with bright stripes is reminiscent of market stalls and fair grounds. The toilet is accessible to make the café as inclusive as possible. 

With the core work starting during the hight of the 2021 Covid-19 Lockdown, this was also a project where new ways of working had to be developed, from outdoor meetings to video site visits and zoom and phone conversations with builders.

The project was completed in May 2021.

Photos by Tara Greifenberg and offsea