Explore Your Dream Kitchen at Virginia Tech

"Explore Your Dream Kitchen," a two-day workshop offered in Virginia Tech's Center for Real Life Kitchen Design, will be offered twice in May to participants who want to learn about planning and designing a kitchen that really meets their needs. Attendees explore and experience kitchens with a wide variety of designs, products, materials, and technologies during this fun and interactive course. Participants are asked to bring plans, ideas, and questions about their homes and kitchens as everyone has the opportunity to discuss their personal needs during an individual kitchen consultation. Upcoming workshops are scheduled for May 21-22, 2004 and May 24-25, 2004.

When Virginia Tech set out to create a multi-station education center for its design students, it came up with not one, but five fully operational kitchens, a laundry area and a home office. The Center for Real Life Kitchen Design reflects the combined effort of Virginia Tech and 25 other contributors, including manufacturers who donated a wide range of products. The goal was to create a teaching lab for kitchen and bath design students.

The result was the Center, designed to not only give students the opportunity to learn new applications of products, materials and technologies used in residential kitchen design, but to also give researchers and industry professionals the opportunity to use the Center for training and continuing education. In addition, the Center also offers multi-media teaching capabilities for classes in housing and interior design.

The Center's kitchens reflect a variety of price levels, lifestyles and use of space. These include a gourmet kitchen, a contemporary kitchen, a family kitchen, a small starter kitchen, a laundry area and a home office.

The workshop will be led by faculty members Kathleen Parrott, Ph.D. (540-231-4783), Joanne Emmel, Ph.D. (540-231-9259) and Julia Beamish, Ph.D. (540-231-8881).

For more information, visit the website at: http://www.conted.vt.edu/dreamkit/