In his memoir Words Without Music, recalling life in New York in the 1970s, composer Philip Glass describes how the old industrial spaces in SoHo started being used as artist's studios. That colonization of manufacturing spaces, after industrial activity had moved to outlying areas, left empty factory buildings in numerous cities—many of which have since been converted into high-end residential spaces.

Glass writes that his first loft was "an unheated square room […]. It had a toilet and a cold water basin." The image of the composer's bohemian surroundings highlights the challenges that kitchens with freestanding units have managed to solve. Because these spaces were not initially conceived for residential use, they lacked traditional home furnishings—the very basics for making them livable spaces.

Another one of the defining features of the transformation brought about by globalization in early 21st-century societies has been people's increasing tendency to move according to the requirements of a constantly changing job market. Many executives and high-level professionals have adapted to a mobile lifestyle that leads them to travel across the globe with their homes packed up in crates and boxes. When these people move, freestanding units allow them to take not only their furniture and personal objects with them, but also their kitchens. As Anatxu Zabalbeascoa mentioned in reference to bulthaup b2, "now [...] the entire kitchen can move with you. And you don't even have to take it unassemble it. Say goodbye to lost investments and hello to a kitchen that will last you a lifetime."

The sources of inspiration for freestanding kitchens go way back to the industrial age and its aesthetics: field stoves and workbenches—utterly practical and, most importantly, portable—and tool cabinets in workshops, where each tool has its place. This is the austere aesthetic that has been carried over to kitchens made of modules and characterized by their functionality and their reduction to the bare essentials.

The functional boundary-blurring that tends to bring the kitchen, the dining room and the living area together into one single, organic whole has been enhanced by the emergence of new ranges of furniture that can be used to tie these different areas into each other, and stands out for its multi-purpose qualities. The range of b Solitaire elements fulfills these new needs for sociability and versatility.

Both bulthaup b2 and b Solitaire, with their austere, refined aesthetics, address today’s need for multi-purpose spaces that bring together the different pleasures of domestic life.

First photo: Casa Nina, bulthaup Girona.

Second photo: Duplex in Barcelona, bulthaup Barcelona Bach 7.

Seventh photo: B&M house, bulthaup Girona.