A Kitchen In a Day: A Sustainable Transformation

At Oru, balancing design, sustainability, functionality requires a lot of our attention.

For our members kitchen we had a design and a plan, we then got the opportunity to salvage a kitchen. Which would mean scrapping the plan we had, taking a risk, working more closely with our builders and crucially accepting compromise.

We chose compromise.

Interestingly, financially, what we gained through purchasing less, we spent in labour and transport.

Flash-forward to a Sunday morning with four builders on site with Vib, with the aim of building a kitchen from scratch using no virgin material in one day.

To begin, the foundation of the kitchen was laid with a resourceful touch – old cupboard doors were repurposed as worktops. We made a conscious choice to repurpose furniture with a history, incorporating water boilers and stools from the now-closed Terroirs restaurant on Lordship Lane. The glass washer, salvaged from a café in West London that met a similar fate, also found a new purpose in this sustainable kitchen. The cups, mugs, plates, and cutlery in the kitchen are not store-bought, but rather a community-driven collection. Members contributed items they no longer needed, fostering a sense of collaboration and shared responsibility. These recycled furnishings not only add character to the space but also carry stories of the locations they once graced.

One of the most intriguing elements of the kitchen is the sink, sourced from a metal scrapyard 5 years ago. Vib patiently held onto the base of the sink, waiting for the perfect moment to integrate it into Oru - true dedication to sustainability and mindful consumption! The kitchen is also adorned with plants sourced entirely from cuttings from other plants around both Oru sites.

What resulted was a compromised kitchen - but we’re really proud of that. It’s not perfect, but it does everything we need it to do and has a story - and can be reused again one day.

We hope that this project showcases the potential for sustainability in our daily lives and serves as an inspiration for others to embrace a similar ethos in their projects.

The stories of these items:

Worktops from cupboard doors, kitchen units reused: Harrods mansions, a well known resident’s family home.

Barstools, stools & water boiler: Terroirs, Lordship Lane, one of Vib’s favourite restaurants :’(

Sink & stand: Metal scrapyard, our residential development in Tottenham.

Crockery, cutlery, cups and mugs: a call out to our members.

Plants: Cuttings from our Dulwich site.

Sarees (sound absorbers): Yaso, Vib’s mum.