Yes, we’re talking about the rangehood – a concept that was designed in the middle ages for open-fire kitchens – but, surely – has reached its retirement?
Granted, with the rise in popularity of island benchtops we’ve seen more subtle cooktop surface extraction solutions develop, but there’s typically been a trade-off in performance. It’s a challenge that the product design and engineering teams at V-ZUG took on with precision commitment, true to the overarching ethos of a company that takes quiet pride in flying the quality design flag of Switzerland at its every understated and innovative turn.
The ability to avoid that trade-off starts with the innovation embedded in the new CombiCookTop V4000 i804 cooktop, which has a slimline design minimising the amount of space underneath that is required for extraction and ventilation. Refined down to its most fundamental form, it’s perfect for use in the design of islands and in open plan kitchens where architects and designers might want to achieve an uninterrupted a sense of space.
From there the ducting follows, with shallow depth or flexible solutions depending on kitchen requirements. These technological advances have additional benefits, in terms of ease of installation, in that the cooktop can be placed on top of or flush with the counter. (If you’re an architect reading this you can check out the company’s industry leading BIM library plug-ins for ease of incorporation into your next project.)
But the benefits don’t stop there. The CombiCookTop V4000 i804 cooking surface also comes equipped with ZoneFlex that home chefs love; that is, intelligent sensors and inductors which detect and adapt to pots regardless of their size and shape. Cooking fumes are extracted directly from the cookware, preventing odours and grease particles from rising.
The ZoneFlex feature is a favourite of Katya Crema, director and co-founder of boutique developer HIP V. HYPE, which has won a number of awards for its Ferrars & York project in South Melbourne. V-ZUG was a partner in the development and Crema, who lives in the complex with her partner and their two young children, has had more than ample time to get to know and test all the features of the range.
“I love to cook and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen,” says Crema. “My favourite appliance has to be the full flex induction cooktop. Sometimes I have four or five pots on the go at any one time, and to be able to have the flexibility to move those around, take off a small pot, put on a large one, and it all just works, it is just a joy to use.
“The cooktop picks up on where the pot is located and how big it is, and then it just transfers the heat accordingly. So I’ve got a very small Bialetti that I use every morning for coffee and I can basically put it anywhere on the stove top that I feel like it, and it will identify where it is, and then you customize the heat. It’s super flexible. And when you’re cooking multiple meals, or you got lots of things on the go, there’s no barrier to having say, more than four things on the cooktop at any one time.”
So here’s the public service alert: you don’t need a range hood or overhead joinery for excellent extraction, and the solution comes designed and made in Switzerland with a 10-year warranty attached. Beyond that there are further plusses for a market V-ZUG knows best – architects and designers – via the supporting guidance on its newly launched B2B website. Industry professionals can register for their own account to easily access a large range of technical information about the products in one place.
