february 2019 - may 2019
A five person team planned a trip to Overland Expo East in November 2018 but, with only a month until Rivian’s debut, team members had to drop one by one until I was the only person left with a plane ticket. I still wasn’t old enough to rent a car under company policy so when I arrived in rural North Carolina to attend the event, I relied on a sparse smattering of Ubers and the kindness of people I met to get around. The upside was that being alone made it easy to spark conversations and I was invited to share many a ground beef burrito in the cold rain. This allowed me to get a first hand look at how people cook and eat in vehicle-based camping set ups. I took these learnings back to the team.
In February, then creative director Larry Parker saw an opportunity to showcase the possibilities of the R1T gear tunnel with a built-in camp kitchen. My learnings served as the foundation for decision making as we quickly designed the camp kitchen to fabricate it in time for Overland Expo West 2019. That kitchen was originally only meant to showcase the customization possibilities of the R1T, but it was immediately embraced and quickly became synonymous with our brand. To this day as a R1T owner, the number one question I get is, “Do you have the kitchen?”
After the initial prototype, I passed the torch to Christian Elder, who designed the production camp kitchen. You can see his work here.
rivian camp kitchen
role - design researcher + industrial designer
solo research @ overland expo east 2018 - card sorting activities and organic conversations at campsites
solo research at overland expo east 2018 - observational research of overlander’s DIY solutions and many, many conversations over ground beef burritos!
design development - in 2 weeks, i moved from rough foamcore prototypes and post-it sketches to design intent renders
in-house fabrication - christian elder perfected CNCed cork inserts to keep our snowpeak utensils and dinnerware from rattling. arthur bledsoe designed the frame and mechanisms and worked with our in-house fabrication team to build the kitchen in less than 6 weeks. Without such a capable team, this never could have happened.
reveal @ overland expo west 2019 - a stranger helped us transport the kitchen’s crate from our hotel to fort tuthill county park for the debut. The first chef’s to cook on the camp kitchen were RJ’s mother-in-law and her best friend who whipped up an heirloom family spaghetti recipe for the 30+ person team working the event.
When posted, the camp kitchen was Rivian’s most interacted with Instagram post to date and countless news outlets picked it up. To this day, the most common question I receive as a Rivian owner is, “Do you have the kitchen?”
What was intended to showcase the possibilities of a gear tunnel became a phenomenon Rivian was known for and so we confirmed we’d put it into production. After the prototype shown here, I was assigned to other projects and Christian Elder took up the task of designing Camp Kitchen 2.0.
