bulthaup

bulthaup was founded in Bavaria in 1949 by Martin Bulthaup and has developed over seven decades into the kitchen manufacturer that the international architecture and design community identifies as the highest standard in kitchen design. The bulthaup approach, which treats the kitchen not as a furniture installation but as an architectural space deserving the same design rigor as any other room in the house, produces kitchen systems of extraordinary precision and restraint. The aluminum and wood construction, the millimeter-precise tolerances, and the absence of unnecessary decoration that characterize the bulthaup product are the expression of the German manufacturing tradition applied to the domestic interior.

The bulthaup b3 system, which is the flagship kitchen program, was designed by Herbert H. Schultes in 2003 and has been recognized with the most significant design awards in the field since its introduction. The b3 system separates the kitchen into three distinct elements, the workbench, the appliance cabinet, and the tool cabinet, which can be arranged independently to create a kitchen organization specific to the client’s workflow and the room’s architecture. The separation of the cooking, storage, and preparation functions into distinct physical units allows the kitchen to be configured for the professional cook’s specific process rather than the standard kitchen layout.

The Georgetown Cady’s Alley showroom at 3324 is in the design district lane that houses the Atelier Jacobs and other design studios alongside the M Street furniture showrooms that constitute Georgetown’s design destination. The bulthaup showroom serves the Georgetown market at the level of the kitchen renovation project where the investment in the kitchen system represents the most significant single expense of the residential renovation.

Hours run Monday through Saturday. The bulthaup b3 kitchen’s separation of the cooking function from the storage and the work surface allows the Georgetown client whose kitchen renovation involves a long, narrow room to configure the kitchen elements in the specific arrangement that the room’s geometry supports. The workbench can be positioned against the long wall, the appliance cabinet can serve as a peninsula, and the tool cabinet can be mounted to provide the utensil and small appliance storage that the cooking process needs at the immediate point of use. The bulthaup manufacturing precision, which is expressed in the tolerance specifications that the German engineering tradition applies to cabinetry production, is visible in the finished kitchen in the flush alignment of the cabinet faces, the smooth and silent operation of the drawer systems, and the absence of the gaps and variations that production tolerances below the bulthaup standard produce. The Georgetown market for the bulthaup kitchen system is the renovation project where the client has decided to treat the kitchen as the most significant investment in the renovation: not the most visible room to the visitor but the room where the quality of the production and the durability of the installation will be experienced daily for decades. The bulthaup kitchen at this level of investment is designed to outlast the Georgetown house’s other renovation components and to be as usable in twenty years as on the day of installation. Hours run Monday through Saturday.