Spain was spectacular

The Reign in Spain tour ended Friday and I flew home yesterday. While I can't say that it's good to be home I will say that it's nice to set aside my suitcases for the time being.

Spain was spectacular in every sense of the word. Prior to leaving, I used the following stock photo a number of times to illustrate what I was going to see in Teruel.

Well as luck would have it, I was in Teruel last Wednesday. I was walking through the Teruel Museum and walked out onto their fifth floor balcony. I was hoping to get a better perspective on the city but what I got was the chance to stand where the photographer who took that stock shot stood. How cool is that?

Now that I'm back, for a month anyway, I'm going to go back to my regular schedule here at good old K&RD. I have learned volumes about the global design scene in the last few weeks and even more about the world political and economic situation. I'm going to start sorting through my findings tomorrow. At first I'll start with the sights and sounds of Spain, then the things I learned about Spanish tile. I'll probably loop back to some other things I found in Germany and Canada after that.

This has been a crazy, wonderful last few weeks and I owe you guys a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks for reading and commenting here and I'm looking forward to being a blogger again.

¡Viva La España!

I am in Spain. Actually, I'm probably not there yet but I'm en route. I've been invited to Spain by ASCER, a Spanish Trade organization that promotes Spanish tile sales in North America under the name Tile of Spain.

I'm part of a small group of designers, architects and press who will spend the next eight days exploring Spain's historic and modern architecture in the cities of Zaragoza, Teruel and Valencia. Our arrival in Valencia next week coincides with the opening of Cevisama, Spain's international showcase for tile, natural stone and bath design.

I'll be checking in regularly with Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare. Additionally, I'll be updating this blog (albeit sporadically) and writing for Contract Design and Houzz.com. This will be a well-documented trip indeed. Let's go to Spain!

An interesting idea from Germany

Blanco sinks had me in Germany last month to attend Cologne's annual furniture show, the IMM. A big part of the IMM is the kitchen category and this year, it had its own name for the first time, The Living Kitchen.

The Living Kitchen was an extravaganza and its size and scope dwarfed its US equivalent, KBIS. My job at the Living Kitchen was to walk around, take photographs and report back the things I saw. It was a tough assignment but somebody had to do it.

I saw a lot of stuff in Cologne, too much almost. But there were a couple of overarching trends I have a feeling we'll start seeing in the US eventually. The most noticeable one I saw was a move away from fat, chunky counters.

The counters on fully half of the kitchens displayed in Cologne were a centimeter thick. At first I was jarred by how thin they were but the more I saw them, the more intrigued I became.

In the US, the desired counter thickness is 1-1/2" and you get close to that by using 3cm counter material. Sometimes, a given stone only comes in 2cm and when forced to use 2cm material, I'd always felt as if I were cheating my clients.

After seeing an entire trade show filled with 1cm counters I'm a convert.

What do you think? Could a 1cm counter ever make you happy?

A new hide-away kitchen from Valcucine

Italian kitchen manufacturer Valcucine chose Toronto for its North American roll out of Artematica, a new kitchen system that does a really clever disappearing act.

Here's my photo of the Artematica when it's all closed.

And here it is opened up.

I had a hard time getting a decent photo of the scale of this thing so the following images are from Valcucine.

Here's a wide angle shot of the Artematica in its closed position.

The cabinetry and counters are all made from the same, acid-etched glass. The glass feels fantastic to the touch and doesn't show fingerprints. The cutting board the sits just above the counter is on a track and it rolls along the entire length of the base cabinets.

The lower doors on the wall cabinets aren't really doors, they slide down out of view when they're not in use. The upper doors tilt up an out of the way.

Once open, the kitchen reveals itself. There's a pot filler faucet behind the cook top, a proper kitchen faucet behind the sink, a ventilation hood over the cook top and storage galore.

There's a remarkable amount of thought and engineering that went into this kitchen. I'm really taken by the way it folds up on itself and disappears when its not in use.

What do you think? Is this a hit or a miss?

German sink intelligence from last week

I have thousands of photos from my Germany trip and almost as many pages of notes. Thank you again to Blanco for granting me this chance of a lifetime perspective on design in Europe.

There are a number of innovations I saw in Cologne that will probably never make it across the pond and a few that will. There were a couple of new things (that aren't new in Europe) that have really had me thinking for the week that I've been back.

For starters, nearly all European kitchen sinks have a drain switch, which can be usual for people who are used to more western Kohler sinks.

That's the dial in the front of this sink. That switch works like the pop up drain in a vanity sink. Stopping and unstopping the sink drain doesn't involve reaching into dirty water in the EU. Blanco tried to introduce the idea of a kitchen sink drain switch in the US but the masses rejected it. As shown above too, most European sinks have an integrated drain board.

I saw a lot of sinks that have integrated cutting boards.

This is an idea so brilliant I can't get over why it hasn't been adopted universally. The dial in the foreground of this photo is the mixer, it sets the temperature and turns on and off the faucet.

Blanco's telescoping faucet was at the IMM in Cologne in a big way and my pals at Blanco's US headquarters assure me that this faucet will make a US debut this year.

That's a fitted, removable strainer basket with a lid to the left.

The small compartment to the rear of that sink is a second drain line. Most European sinks have overflow drains. Sometimes, they just act as an overflow drain and sometimes they add some utility as does the one above.

For as long as I've been involved int he kitchen and bath industry, I've been told that it's impossible to undermount a sink in a laminate counter. Well, that's the very thing I'm showing above. That's a Blanco ceramic sink undermounted in a laminate counter.

Blanco got its start as a stainless steel fabricator and it's in steel that they excel as kitchen artisans. This is a stainless steel counter with two integrated drainboards and an integrated, flat bottom sink.

It's a one centimeter, floating counter.

Another cool touch on a lot of Blanco's steel sinks is a drain cover. It serves no purpose other than to disguise a sink drain.

It's an almost inconsequential detail that makes a world of difference. The rectangular shape on the back sink wall is the overflow drain and the man in the background is Tim Maicher, Blanco's VP of marketing in the US and all-around good guy.

Prior to my trip to Germany (and later to Canada) with Blanco, kitchen sinks were never something I spent a whole lot of time thinking about. I knew that a good one was important but I never really grasped what makes a good kitchen sink. I sure know now! A good sink begins and ends with Blanco. Don't ever buy anything less.