Finishing touches
Personal expression in the kitchen.
If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the manner in which it is planned is a window into the domestic patterns of a house’s inhabitants. And though every kitchen is fundamentally a working zone made up of similar components – fridge, oven, sink and so on – the fourteen featured in this issue reveal a pleasing variety in the way those components come together and in how the room as a whole might engage with, or separate itself from, the rest of the house. For Owen Architecture, the kitchen of Camp Hill Cottage (page 32) is generous and open to allow food preparation to become a communal activity among extended family. For Doherty Design Studio, however, a butler’s pantry sequestered behind the “public” kitchen of Kew Residence (page 138) enables the clients to regularly entertain up to eighty guests without feeling like their family kitchen has become a commercial one.
Aesthetically, kitchen design is shifting away from a crisp, all-white finish. White joinery is offset by distinctive monolithic islands in black (Studio Griffiths’s Main Ridge House, page 64) or concrete (Madeleine Blanchfield Architects’ Clovelly House II, page 108) or striking veined marble (Luigi Rosselli Architects’ Bougainvillea Row House,
page 132). Elsewhere, kitchens are expressed in vibrant finishes, such as in Multiplicity’s Too Many Tims Are Never Enough (page 58) and SJB’s Cleveland Rooftop (page 38), or rich, equine-inspired brown tones, such as in Tecture’s Ceres Gable House (page 84).
The use of materials such as brick and formply and the prevalence of concrete benchtops and floors point to a shared interest in design that celebrates the beauty inherent in the structure. At Baber Studio and Marc and Co’s AtticUndercroft House (page 126), the kitchen and living areas are inspired by the undercroft of the Queenslander – a utilitarian external space not traditionally intended for habitation. Unadorned surfaces are paired with warmer, softer materials such as timber and brass to create spaces that are deliberately unembellished yet inviting to inhabit.
As for finishing touches, several of the kitchens feature display shelves that break up the joinery and encourage us to appreciate the smaller details. Open shelves allow a home’s inhabitants to display treasures and offer a window into their personal tastes – albeit a carefully edited, social media-savvy snapshot. Let’s call it the Instagram effect (no filter necessary).