Abimis made the kitchen for the company canteen at Red Dot GmbH & Co in Essen. The organisation has awarded the world-famous Red Dot Design Award, one of the most significant international design awards, since 1995.
The German designers contacted the small company canteen division at Abimis, Atelier Professional, which specialises in kitchens for corporate Management, corporate representative kitchens and and lounge areas with kitchens for smart businesses. This division was set up thanks to Abimis’s experience in making bespoke kitchens and professionally-derived kitchens. In other words, kitchens designed to offer professional performance levels, yet devised specifically, both in their aesthetic styling and painstaking care for details, for domestic settings or representative business venues.
A kitchen for company management, employees and guests
The offices of Red Dot GmbH are located in Essen, in the lively Ruhr region, specifically in a modern building which stands out for its minimal silhouettes, typical of rationalist architecture.
The corporate kitchen was installed on the third floor of the building, where employees and management can get together and prepare and eat their meals together. More than a company canteen, the Red Dot kitchen is a veritable lounge area with a kitchen.
It does not look like a traditional canteen: it is smaller, more welcoming and well-tended, both in terms of its design as well as from a functionality perspective.
It is a sociable space where, in addition to eating meals, users can devote their time and effort to preparing food too. In the majority of cases, however, the Red Dot GmbH corporate kitchen is managed by a pair of professional chefs who prepare meals for employees, for top management as well as for the company’s many guests, from breakfast through to dinner.
This “executive kitchen” is a dynamic and flexible space, which hosts informal events, work meetings, cooking courses, company parties and much more.
A complex, functional project with an impeccable design
This kitchen with an island, which takes up three walls of the canteen, is in the shape of a C. Its distinguishing feature is that it is entirely self-supporting since, for technical reasons, the walls could not be drilled into and so wall units could not be installed.
This meant the architects had a complex task ahead of them, and they were supported throughout every phase of the design process by the engineering department at Abimis.
The corporate kitchen at Red Dot GmbH consists of a central element housing the appliances – three microwave ovens, two coffee machines and two dishwashers – and two adjacent washing areas: one on the left and the other on the right. At either end of the C stand two symmetrical tall units with storage and a refrigerator. Their rounded corners mark a soft and smooth passage into to the canteen.
A large T-shaped island
Between the food preparation area and the dining area, a large T-shaped island (also with rounded corners) clearly separates the two areas. On one side of the island is a double cooking area with induction hobs and Teppanyaki hot plate topped by a large industrial, powerful and silent hood, which allows users to cook in full view without leaving any residual odours.
On the other is a counter with stools to eat a quick snack or for a coffee break with colleagues.
This solution – to fit the kitchen with two separate workstations – allows several people to cook at the same time, while keeping their distance and preventing the creation of crowds, in accordance with Covid restrictions.
On the opposite side of the kitchen, a storage unit incorporates 4 refrigerated wine cellars in a single cabinet. It is a kind of stainless steel “sideboard”, with exposed glass-fronted cabinets, also bespoke and made by Abimis.
The dining area itself is not very large. It is designed to accommodate twenty people at most: three rectangular tables seating 4/6 people and three round tables for 2. Just like a small corporate restaurant, beautiful and of the highest quality.
Besides, in the international temple of design, the corporate kitchen couldn’t be anything less than a super sophisticated object of design.
