Looking back to when I was studying architecture, I now recognise how little focus there was on making designs for children. Lectures and project topics rarely mentioned them. There is nothing in the architectural history books and little by way of ergonomic studies for children (or kitchen design either, but that is another story). I remember a 1970s exhibition at a London museum called A Child’s Eye View that featured a photograph of a young child crossing a pedestrian bridge with the handrails unreachable and the balusters so widely spaced the child could fall through them off the bridge ..read more

One morning forty years ago, sitting at his wooden drawing board in his studio bedroom in Kensington, Johnny’s unconscious found a word that summed up his frustration at the growing spell of ‘fitted’ to describe a kitchen: ‘Unfitted’. Unfitted was the perfect antidote to what had become the orthodoxy of fitted kitchens. Johnny decided to test this out. He booked a 30 x 40mm advert in The Times newspaper: 'Bored with fitted kitchens? If interested why not try an Unfitted Kitchen? Please call 937 2670 ' 14 words, seven numbers and £300 produced 25 enquiries. Orders followed. Three years later Sm ..read more

A podcast is a great platform for telling stories. Podcasts areways to meet new people and hear all sorts of personal details about their lives, to explore ideas - colourful, unexpected or maybe common sense ones   I am building up a portfolio of interviews of thinkers, historians, writers, artists, architects and many types of craftspeople - also foodies and cooks and those helping make our kitchens rich places and our homes beautiful and gemütlich.   Since I was tiny, I have wanted to make things. The creation of beautiful, usable household objects has occupied my mind and my hand ..read more

On her retirement after three decades, Jill Norman has appointed me to take over as literary executor and trustee of the Elizabeth David estate. This coincides with the seventh anniversary this week of the unveiling of the blue plaque on my aunt’s Chelsea house. It poured with rain that May day when, on behalf of English Heritage, historian Rosemary Hill spoke to a group of us standing on the street. A little red curtain that had been attached to the wall slid open and Dr Hill summed up with this comment: ‘Elizabeth David was taken seriously in a way that no English food writer had been before ..read more

Author: Johnny Grey When I first saw the pictures I had a doubletake. This was a kitchen I designed 18 years ago that had morphed into something new. I blinked a few times and read the email title. It became clear. The kitchen had literally been lifted to a new site. An extraordinary story emerged. Tess and Mike Shaw had acquired through the Used Kitchen Exchange a project I did for clients near Glasgow. They then spent three years devoted to turning it step by step into their dream kitchen, no compromise. This process gives recycling a meaning far beyond saving money, its constraints leading ..read more

Maggie and Charles Jenck’s circular kitchen in their Cosmic House in Holland Park was a project I worked on in around 1980. The kitchen took its place in a grand vision linking, in a spirit of self-conscious playfulness, areas of the house with abstract ideas and classical design elements. It was called Indian Summer and the next-door utility and laundry area Autumn. Charles Jencks’s thinking was that these rooms brought ‘the cycle of seasons to a close’… not exactly sure how, but it’s best not to be too literal. The end-grain chopping block with its organic waste chute and the first ever boi ..read more

Memphis and a trip to Milan in October 1979 comes to mind when I think of my earliest inspiration for designing fun into the kitchen. I recall vivid colours, kitsch patterns and strange curves as I walked into an exhibition at Il Salone Mobile by Ettore Sottsass and the interior design collective Memphis. As I entered the space my first impression was of the scale of the empty room. There were only four or five pieces of furniture and they were classic Memphis pieces: Kitsch, awkwardly shaped, brightly coloured and patterned. A strangely-shaped bookcase in leopard print. It appeared ugly, more ..read more

Author: Lulu Grimes, managing editor BBC Good Food I asked designer Johnny Grey. Here are his 3 key insights In food media, we talk about food trends from ingredients to gadgets all the time, but we rarely touch on kitchens or, more specifically, kitchen functionality. These last few months have shown that for many people the kitchen has changed in function - as well as providing many more meals than normal, it may well be used as an office space, classroom and entertainment room. This multifunctional kitchen will have a very different impact on all the parts of the food world that inter ..read more

These are kitchen spaces for people beyond the nuclear family to come together to cook and eat. We see them as a blend of home kitchen, café, village hall and pub. In his 40 plus years as a designer Johnny’s kitchens have always promoted the shared pleasures of cooking, eating, drinking and putting the world to rights. His furniture and layouts encourage lingering at a sunny or candlelit table, chatting while chopping at an island or stirring a pot on the hob, perching nearby to catch up after a day’s work or get some help with homework. Johnny is now transplanting these modes of kitchen livin ..read more

JGS has been involved in a new kind of project designing a retreat room for young adult cancer patients at UCL Hospital. Known as the Sanctuary Room, this is a smallish space that transports its users away from the clinical environment into a zone of enclosed safety and aesthetic richness. To create the right feeling we worked with the idea of a luxury railway compartment in the Orient Express. There is wooden panelling, as well as artworks and comfortable sofas. A virtual window shows moving images of nature and other content. It is designed to boost patients’ wellbeing in a different way to ..read more