Some time ago we worked with European appliance maker Fagor on the microwave of the future as a collaborative project with the Royal College of Art (IDE programme).One of the well received ideas we created was based around the cloche (or as I called it at the time the 'Butler' service of hot food - the shiny hemisphere used to reveal gourmet delights). Fagor developed the product true to the original concept.
The inventive step was propositional - the microwave is a box with a door on the front mainly because this is an easy shape to manufacture in terms of a casing but also significantly in terms of the Faraday cage which protects us all from the potentially harmful microwaves. The proposition was that if we changed the shape of the Faraday case we could have a much more useable form factor. This would allow access from multiple angles and allowing plates and other containers to be placed simply on a platter rather than fed through a doorway - hey presto the Fagor Spoutnik! Gratifyingly close to our original concept. Taking the microwave out from the shadows and corners. Hope it does well or at least makes people think...
http://www.fagor.co.uk/spoutnik/
