Post-Modern Kitchen Design: What’s That?!

Kitchen Remodeling Jan 11

The mere invocation of the term “post-modernism” tends cause eyes to glaze over and brains to spill out of ears. It’s one of the most enigmatic and nebulous terms ever conceived and seems to refer to everything and nothing at the same time. So, then the question becomes: how does it apply to interior design and more specifically, kitchen design?

Postmodern Design

Postmodernism was a whimsical reaction to the minimalism of modernist architecture. The emphasis on playfulness and the willingness to mix and match various motifs was at the core of the movement. For that reason, postmodern design has never come into style and has never gone out of style. It’s simply an approach to style that treats style itself the way a designer would treat a piece of furniture, a rug, or a piece of art. It’s an attitude about style, and against style. It is an attitude of subversion that attacks the categorical impulse that seems to govern our approach to decor and design. Postmodernism revels in apparent contradictions, that seem on the surface not go well with one another, but when you consider them in terms of the entire room, do pair beautifully with one another. Postmodernism doesn’t care if this object is considered high art and another object is considered pop art. Postmodernism wants to figure out a way to make the two of them work together.

How Does This Work in a Kitchen?

Considering the above description, it’s not the most intuitive task to design a postmodern kitchen. The fundamental aspects that one must consider in the process is that playfulness and thinking outside the box reign supreme. Those that are fixated on a style have already lost the plot of the story that postmodernism is trying tell. But there’s no reason why the rustic stylings of art deco can’t be matched with modern considerations, or even paired with Victorian stylings. The anti-style aesthetic resists any attempt to label it as this or that kind of thing. The term “postmodern” itself is ambiguous to the point of meaningless—for good reason. The moment you try to box it in, it slips away.Playing with motif in this fashion may not be for everyone, and make it work successfully is going to be tricky as well. Victorian doesn’t really want to pair with rustic, and rustic doesn’t necessarily want to pair with modern. It would take an almost masochistic attention to detail to force all these motifs to operate in one space without clashing, which is probably why so few have tried. Nonetheless, while it may not be recommended that you try a full on postmodern kitchen, employing a little more of postmodernism’s attitude toward uniformity of style can give your kitchen the personal touch it’s been looking for.