Hang Your Hobs on the Wall When You Aren't Cooking With Them

Adriano Studio shows the future of induction cooking with Ordine

When TreeHugger founder Graham Hill designed his LifeEdited Apartment back in 2012, he didn't include a kitchen stove; instead he used three Fagor induction cooktops, or hobs as they are called in the UK. Many, including me, thought he was nuts. But as David Friedlander wrote,

The burners can be stowed away, which makes the kitchen look less kitchen-y, something important in a small space where visual clutter can shrink a room. They give us the flexibility of using the burners wherever we need them, which is nice in a small kitchen where two can be a crowd. We can use as many or as few as we want at a time; typically, only one is out on the counter at a time.

© Adriano Studio

Ordine Induction Hob

But it was a pain, getting them in and out of drawers and dealing with the wires. Now Davide and Gabriele Adriano of Adriano Design have looked at the problem for Fabita, "a young and dynamic Italian kitchen hood and induction hob manufacturing company," and have come up with Ordine.

© Adriano Studio

Ordine is a revolution- a deconstruction of the induction hob, as we know it today. The hob is no longer an irremovable block in your kitchen, where the distance between the nozzles is never enough when you are cooking with larger pots. With Ordine you will decide at what distance the nozzles need to be while cooking and how to put them back leaving the surface free when you don’t need to cook.

Elizabeth with her wood stove/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

This actually is a revolution. Our kitchen ranges were big immovable blocks in our kitchens because they evolved from wood stoves, where the heat source had to be contained and supplied heat to both the oven and the stovetop. When they switched to gas or high voltage electricity and were hot, it made sense to keep them together and wire them permanently in place.

Induction cooking changes this. Wires are thin, they are not hot to the touch, so there is no reason to tie them down. Cooking has changed too; people have separate appliances for different purposes, from coffee machines to instant pots, neither of which you would screw down onto the countertop.

© Adriano Studio

Most of the portable induction hobs we have shown (like the IKEA TILLREDA) are, well, portable, and have to be plugged in. The Adriano brothers have made an interesting design move by having the control unit fixed to the wall and the hobs on a short fixed leash; it limits the portability somewhat but makes them easier to store and use, and puts the controls at eye level. This is smart stuff.

Enigma Exhaust

We have been going on about indoor air quality, and how even just frying an egg can put out a lot of VOCs and particulates. The Adriano team has that covered too, with the Enigma exhaust.

© Adriano Studio

..and where’s the hood? This is Enigma. A question and a flabbergasting reply, a perfect concealment that magically hides your hood. A simple, beautiful linear shelf with two ceramic vases on top, is this all that’s needed to treat the air in your kitchen, Enigma? That’s right! But it’s also the perfect solution that we were all looking for.

© Adriano Studio

It is an enigma to me, how much air they can move through that tiny shelf, but a lot of kitchen exhausts have remote fans, perhaps it is just the filter and the intake in that thin slab. It certainly is an elegant solution.

© Traveler XL

I often smile at the kitchen equipment in some of the tiny houses that Kim shows us on Treehugger, with "big immovable blocks" of kitchen appliances. Adriano Studio shows a different approach, where less really is more. Tiny houses should meet their tiny kitchen appliances.