6.4 SPACE PLANNING

The following were key considerations when laying out the space:

Kids learning in a hands on way. There is enough worktop space for 30 children to all cook together. Children work in groups of 3 at 10 specially designed work stations.

Ease of demonstration. A cluster of 5 work stations are arranged to form a large central island. When the chef is demonstrating a technique, children gather round the island to watch.

Ease of supervision. From a central position at the front of the space the educator can see all pupils, this is crucial with children handling knives and cooking utensils. At least one teaching assistant is always on hand to circulate and provide additional supervision.

Good sight lines for supervision

Central island where the chef can brief the group

6.5 CAPACITY AND CIRCULATION

To give an idea of the floor area required, the Hackney School of Food had a gross internal area (GIA) of 47sqm (506sqft).

We’d recommend that this is considered the absolute minimum to accommodate 30 primary school children (this substantially below a typical classroom size but we had to work with the space we had available).

The kitchen is planned to make circulation around and through the space as simple as possible. There is a ring of circulation space around the central island and a through route between the educator station and the service zone on the rear wall.

= Student cooking station

= Educator cooking station

= Washing station

= Circulation route dw = Dishwasher ov = Oven fr = Fridge hw = Handwash station st = Store cupboard

Having refined our brief we established a set of key design principles. These underpinned all design decisions and were established to help us meet the requirements of the brief in a logical and coherent fashion.

When planning the kitchen, we aimed to keep the space where the kids do most of their prep and cooking separate from the areas they’d engage with less. This broadly results in two zones, an educator zone and a kids’ zone. There is of course some cross-over but minimising how much kids need to circulate during a lesson makes supervision easier and helps them maintain focus on the task at hand.

The diagram below shows the different zones and the adjacent image shows how we positioned key appliances and equipment.

Our appliances and equipment: Educator zone

Kids' zone

10 height-adjustable work stations, each with undercounter pot, pan and utensil storage.

1 height-adjustable / demonstrator station. Tall catering fridge.

2 height-adjustable sink stations with hose taps. Meiko Dishwasher. Hand washing station (2 taps).

Tall store cupboard for cleaning equipment. Rational Combi oven (10 grid).

6.7 HEIGHT-ADJUSTABLE WORK STATIONS

When designing the kitchen it was very important to us that the kitchen was accessible for all ages and abilities. We developed our own height-adjustable cooking and washing stations, to allow reception aged kids and fully grown adults to cook in equal comfort.

Each cooking station is designed to be used by 3 kids or 2 two adults. Some design tips:

The working height is adjustable from about 64cm up to 94cm. Find heightadjustable frames here.

Each cooking station is 180cm wide x 60cm deep.

Cooking stations contain 1 x 4 ring induction hob, mounted completely flush with the worktop, so kids can slide heavy pans across the entire surface.

Induction hobs are a good choice as they’re only on and hot when in contact with a pot or pan.

Worktops are made from stainless steel just as you’d find in a professional kitchen. Super durable!

Each cooking station includes an undermounted storage unit made from birch plywood. The storage includes a utensil drawer, a pots and pans drawer and a small cupboard.

Lesson learned!

The cooking stations were designed as prototypes and, while largely successful, improvements could be made.

When fully loaded the cupboards get a little too heavy for the height-adjustable frames. A better solution would be to detach the cupboards from the worktops. Mounting the detached units on castors would provide greater flexibility and make cleaning around them easy.