Nojae Park – Cook a complete meal without leaving your desk

South Korean student’s kitchen in a drawer is a finalist in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition.

For people who live in front of their computers in tiny flats, Drawer Kitchen which combines an eating surface, fridge, hot plate and dish drawer in about the same space as a filing cabinet could be the solution.

The appliance is one of nine finalists out of more than 600 entries from 49 countries in the Electrolux Design Lab 2008 competition. This year, the sixth year of the global contest, undergraduate and graduate industrial design students were invited to create appliance concepts for the Internet generation.

“I got the idea from looking at the small living spaces in Tokyo and at how much time people spend at their desks when they are at home,” explains Drawer Kitchen’s creator, Nojae Park, a design student at Chiba University, near Tokyo, Japan. “A lot of people live in one-room flats. They go out early in the morning and come back late at night and rarely eat a meal in the house. If they do, it’ll be a simple one.”

Park points out that the Internet is a main point of contact with the world for the Internet generation: “They find information, keep up with their friends, order food, make reservations and many other things through the Internet. And they don’t want to move while they are at their monitor, but at the same time, they are hungry. So they want to solve their hunger problem near their computer desk.”