Mary G. Pepitone
Universal Press Syndicate

A kitchen island is no longer uncharted territory. Not only is the kitchen island a space for food preparation, it can also serve as a home’s gathering place. The island’s functional design has even migrated to outdoor kitchens.

But the kitchen island wasn’t always on the map in homes built prior to the 1960s, according to 92-year-old Chuck Williams, founder of Williams-Sonoma housewares.

“In the 1960s, people were starting to remodel their kitchens to make them more livable, to accommodate everyday eating,” he says. “Prior to that, a kitchen could be treated as a utilitarian place to cook the meal…while a family ate in the dining room.”

After moving to a home in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood in the 1960s, Williams devised a functional kitchen island using a butcher-block table.

“I just placed an 8-by-3-foot maple-top table in the center of my kitchen and ran the plumbing for a stainless-steel sink on one side of it,” he says. “The table placed in the center of the room made it a comfortable kitchen to work in…It was novel because guests loved to sit around my table in the kitchen, and we didn’t retreat to a secluded dining room to eat.”

When it comes to today’s kitchen design, the island is part of a homeowner’s lexicon, according to Ed Pell, a market researcher for the National Kitchen and Bath Association.

“A kitchen island is a free-standing workspace that has access from all sides,” Pell says. “The days of appliances being tethered to walls are over. A kitchen island can house the sink, cook top, dishwasher, television, computer or all of the above.”

Blue Arnold, a Baltimore-area kitchen and bath designer, designed Whirlpool’s “digital kitchen,” which was unveiled at the 2007 Kitchen/Bath Industry Show in Las Vegas.

“The idea of this project was to show how the kitchen island has evolved into a technological hub of the home,” he says.

Arnold says laptop computers, televisions and cell phone chargers are landing on it.

“The biggest request I receive from homeowners is to create an island as the center of their kitchen,” he says. “I also think the idea of preparing food has evolved into a ‘cooking as theater’ philosophy – where the person preparing the food is also having a social experience with family and friends.”