Apple innovator Steve Jobs embraced small-is-better kitchens ahead of his time

November 19, 2011 — amy mullen, johnny grey, kitchen design, remax, smaller kitchen, steve jobs

Looks like Steve Jobs was an iconoclast when it came to homes and kitchens, too.

Although Americans lately have embraced smaller homes, shrinking their average size by 5% from 2007 to 2010, Jobs thought smaller was better even 18 years ago, according to British kitchen designer Johnny Grey, who worked with Jobs in the mid-1990s.  (See Johnny Grey’s blog on the kitchen design)

“Remarkably, for one of the world’s richest individuals, Jobs lived in modest style,” says Grey about the Palo Alto home that Jobs and his wife, Laurene, called their “cottage.” The center of family life was a cozy kitchen with white cabinets, tiled tops, and wooden edges.

Grey and Jobs worked together on a kitchen design that was contemporary and compact.

“Shaker simplicity was often his default position,” Grey says. “I suspect he became more of a modernist in the late nineties.”

Unfortunately, Jobs never constructed the kitchen.

“He was a very private person and reluctant to have contractors work around him,” Grey says, “powerfully disliking noise, mess and invasion of their home.”

Do you have any memories of Steve Jobs? Have you ever designed a project that you didn’t construct?