How What's Cooking In Kitchen Appliances Ties Into Tech Trends
Kitchens are popular because, besides their obvious utility in providing sustenance, they allow adults to play with the forbidden items of childhood: knives, water, fire and food. It's only natural that the other great modern plaything, computer technology, would be enlisted in this effort.
The extent to which that is occurring can be judged from the aisles at the kitchen industry's annual trade show, which took place last week in Las Vegas. And the answer is: not as much as one might fear.
True, Samsung and LG have refrigerators with computers and TVs built into the doors, but even a Samsung salesman concedes they are mainly for show. While kitchen industrial designers, like their counterparts elsewhere, seem to believe that no human being should ever not be looking at an LED digital readout, the sillier, Jetson's style application of computer technology -- cameras in your faucets, browsers in your blenders, that sort of thing -- appears to be in check, at least for the time being.
(Actually, one of the hottest materials in kitchens these days is not silicon but Portland cement. Among the longest lines at the show was one at a book signing by celebrity concrete-counter impresario, Fu-Tung Cheng, the Berkeley, Calif., designer who has almost single-handedly dragged concrete out of the garage and into the kitchen.)
Look deeper, though, and computer technology, along with the global forces associated with it, is turning the kitchen world upside down. It's just not happening in ways immediately apparent to someone simply trying to choose a new set of cabinet knobs. (By the way, how on earth can there be so many?)
There is, for instance, the wide availability of high-quality, medium-cost wood products, especially cabinets. This is not on account of armies of woodworkers standing by, planes and chisels in hand. Instead, credit goes to the declining cost of "computer numerical control" machines, which are room-sized robotic units that do anything to a piece of wood the computer tells them to. Indeed, the more rustic the wood carving you see in a design store appears to be -- the more packed it is with barns and roosters -- the more likely it is to have been made using a computer.
CNC-style machines are speeding up quarrying, too, making them one of the factors behind the current glut of granite, the once ultra-expensive countertop that is now just pricey.
The other huge trend shaking up the kitchen industry is the same one shaking up the tech industry and everyone else: China. In cramped booths around the perimeter of last week's show, new, still-small Chinese companies were offering products for the high end of the market, but at low-end prices. "Tree China," for instance, had for $43 a double-bowl stainless-steel sink that, to an untrained eye, looked just like the $700 ones being marketed a few hundred feet away by upscale Swiss sink-maker Franke.
Chinese companies are still fighting the perception of low quality, though; Gordon Hodge, logistics manager for Franke, which has had some lines made in China, says Chinese stainless-steel suppliers will sometimes try to pass off inferior product -- with too much carbon and too little nickel -- as high grade.
Even some Chinese businessmen admit quality can still be a problem. "It's scary what you will sometimes get," says Joanna Shek, owner of cabinet-maker TSG, located near Harbin. Ms. Shek says, though, that her own cabinets have no such quality problems and that sales are booming. She says she is shipping 60 containers of oak cabinets a month to the U.S. -- triple the number of a year ago -- at roughly 30% of what an American supplier would charge.
Of course, many parts of the high-end kitchen world are impervious to price. Sub-Zero, famous maker of expensive refrigerators, used last week's show to introduce its latest expensive refrigerator, the Pro 48, which costs about $12,000, or $3,000 more than the company's previous most-expensive model. (Sub-Zeros may be the only appliance ever mocked on "The Simpsons." When Homer sees one in a neighbor's remodeled kitchen, he gasps, "A refrigerator that's slightly colder! And in our lifetime!")
Slightly colder refrigerators are just one of the trends that roll through the kitchen world at a rate that makes the fashion industry seem suffused with Shaker constancy. Just like the computer industry, kitchen companies are constantly trying to get users to upgrade. They can count on shelter-oriented media -- which need the industry for ads -- for help with all the trend-mongering.
So what are these trends? For one, the High Commercial style appears to be on its last stainless-steel legs. These are kitchens with so many reflective surfaces that you feel as though you are in the mirror-maze scene in "The Lady From Shanghai"; with oven-control knobs the size of skulls and vent hoods so roomy a small family could camp under one; with those tall, coiled "prerinse" faucets that make it seem the owner is in training for a job as a minimum-wage dishwasher (hairnet optional).
What's next? Hard to say, but don't be surprised if, as part of the great circle of life, color starts making a reappearance. Green, maybe...as in avocados. So earthy! So luscious! So now!
厨具与科技趋势共进
如今，厨房也成了流行的一部分，因为成年人能够在这个提供一日三餐的地方触碰到孩提时代只能远观的刀具、水、火以及食品。电脑科技，作为当今另一种了不起的现代玩具，进入厨房也是自然而然的事情了。
上周拉斯维加斯举行的年度厨具贸易展为我们提供了一窥现代厨房的机会。答案是：并不像有些人担心的那么可怕。
没错，三星电子(Samsung)和LG展示了门上嵌有电脑和电视机的冰箱，但即使是三星电子的销售人员也承认这些产品主要是用于展示。虽然和其他的工业设计师一样，厨房用品设计师们好像都认为人们愿意在一个LED数字屏上看电视，但一些更为荒唐的电脑技术应用，如在水龙头里安装摄像机，在食品搅拌机上安装浏览器等等，似乎已经开始止步，至少目前是这样。
（事实上，如今厨房中应用最热的材料之一不是硅，而是波特兰水泥。在此次贸易展会上，参观者队伍排得最长的是加州伯克利知名的水泥台面设计师Fu-Tung Cheng的签名售书桌前。）
但如果深入再看，电脑技术以及相关的全球力量正在给厨房世界带来翻天覆地的变化。只不过这种变化并不像某人挑选一组新的橱柜把手那样迅速。
市场上高品质、中档价位的木制品，尤其是橱柜，可谓琳琅满目。但这并不是因为有大量的木匠，而是电脑数控设备的成本下降，这种有房间大小的机器人设备可以在一块木头上执行电脑程序的任何指令。事实上，你在设计店中看到的越是具有乡土气味的木刻工艺，就越可能是电脑数控设备的杰作。
电脑数控设备也加快了石材切割的速度，在一定程度上造成了昔日的台面奢侈品花岗岩出现供应过剩，花岗岩的价格目前虽然仍然昂贵，但已不是高不可攀。
另一股塑造著现代厨房业，同时也在深刻影响著科技业和每个人的大趋势来自中国。在上周贸易展外围的狭窄摊位上，一些新面孔的中国小企业展示了针对高端市场的产品，但价格却属于底端。以Tree China为例，这家公司展示的一款售价43美元的双盆不锈钢水槽，在外行眼里看来就像几百步以外瑞典高档水槽生产商弗兰卡(Franke)展示的700美元价位的产品。
不过，中国企业仍在努力挣脱低质的名声；有数款产品在中国生产的弗兰卡公司的物流经理豪治(Gordon Hodge)表示，中国的不锈钢供应商有时会试图以次充好，在生产过程中加入太多的碳，减少镍的比例。
即使是一些中国商人也承认质量仍是一个问题。“有时你会很担心能拿到什么样的货，”邻近哈尔滨的橱柜公司TSG的所有人夏克(Joanna Shek)表示。不过，她说，自己的橱柜没有这样的质量问题，销售额正在迅速增长。她说，每个月她都会有60个集装箱的橡木橱柜出口到美国，是一年前的三倍，售价仅为美国供应商的30%左右。
当然，总体来说，高端厨具的价格依然是高高在上。著名的高档冰箱生产商Sub-Zero在上周的贸易展上推出了最新的天价冰箱Pro 48，售价约为12,000美元，比该公司以前最贵的一款冰箱还高了3,000美元。
