Space saving microwave design

For various reasons, microwaves have long existed as additive appliances placed into (rather than constructed as part of) home kitchens. They’re often bulky, sometimes requiring the purchase of a cart or other piece of furniture just to support them — which isn’t exactly ideal in a space-challenged compact kitchen. This interesting microwave in a drawer concept aims to change all of that, with a built-in solution that addresses aesthetic as well as functional issues.

Slotted alongside your other kitchen drawers, the space-saving Innowave unit by Anoush Mortazavi uses an existing commercial-kitchen innovation – the aluminum mode stirrer – to replace the typical rotating-plate approach to complete and even cooking of microwaved food (making it more like an oven than conventional microwave, and really, more functional as well.)

Microwave in a drawer

This slide-out compact microwave features a magnetic sensor in the handle to turn itself off automatically, should someone come along and accidentally open it while it is working. Finishing touches include hollow stainless steel structure, lightweight removable side shelves and slots as well as an exterior touch screen control panel and digital display (for viewing even when the device is in use).

Microwave in a drawer display

While no single aspect is implausible, the finished product might take some time (and certainly some money) to make into a ready-to-manufacture fixture of modern households … and a lingering question remains: how do you begin to standardize the sizes so they fit below most (or many) kitchen counter tops? Maybe if this unusual kitchen appliance caught on, and demand started to rise, kitchen cabinet manufacturers would design their products around its inclusion.

Here’s what designer Anoush Mortazavi has to say about his slide-out microwave design:

“The major project of my undergraduate degree, this wad exhibited at Sheffield Hallam University’s Creative Spark degree show and the New Designers exhibition in Islington.”

“Innowave is a high quality, contemporary microwave oven with superior efficiency, designed for space-saving kitchens to either slide retrospectively into an existing standard sized drawer cavity or to be fitted into a new / refurbished kitchen, thereby freeing up the work surface for other tasks. It brings value to microwave cooking, so that it may be seen on the same or a higher pedestal as other fundamental kitchen appliances.”