The modern kitchen comes in a variety of different designs, sizes, and square footage. When you’re looking to expand your cooking area or just make simple upgrades such as adding custom cabinets you’ll naturally want to do research on the topic before choosing suitable kitchen remodeling services. This is where it’s easy to become confused as some figures say the average kitchen is 150 square feet while others will say over 700 square feet.(more…)
A converted showroom in London and a São Paulo penthouse with a wood-wrapped elevator are included in this lookbook of homes with smart residential lifts.
Lifts, also known as elevators, are mechanical shafts that carry people, cars and loads between multiple levels and are typically used in tall buildings.
But they can also be found in residential buildings, where they can be used to quickly move between floors and ensure that people with mobility issues can easily access the different levels of their homes.
This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring beige interiors, cosy cabins, space-saving pocket doors.
Canadian architecture firm Omar Gandhi Architects built this three-storey home in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The home was named after a syncline – a type of rock formation – and comprises two white volumes that flank a double-height glazed core at its centre.
A lift was added to the home and set within locally-sourced spruce housing. This elevator is located at the corner of the home and leads to its open-plan kitchen from behind a white door.
Espirit House was designed by Japanese architecture studio Apollo Architects & Associates for a client who works in landscaping.
The main bulk of the home has a blocky concrete form and is suspended above a garage. An elevator leads to the interior of the home, where it is located next to the staircase in the main dining area. Floor-to-ceiling windows flank each side of the home, bringing light to the wood-clad interior.
Completed by San Francisco-based practice Jensen Architects, this home was built for a couple who wanted a home with a serene feel that had views of San Francisco.
Totalling five storeys, the home is composed of a number of stacked boxes with cantilevered areas. Jensen Architects added a simplistic interior palette of white oak, plaster and polished concrete.
An elevator was added to the home so that its owners can enjoy the space and its views as they age. On the fourth floor, it is located within a white-painted volume and opens up towards an outdoor terrace.
At this São Paulo penthouse, which was designed by Brazilian studio Tria Arquitectura, an elevator shaft was wrapped in vertical strips of slatted wood.
Other textural materials were used throughout the home, including travertine floors, fabric and wood-panelled walls, which contrast against the home’s stark white walls.
In this west London home that was converted from a showroom to a residence for its elderly owners, British architect Neil Duskeiko installed a lift so that its residents could gain access to the upper floors of the home with ease.
The elevator runs from the ground floor to the living area and finally to the primary bedroom, which was decorated with floral wallpaper. The elevator has a wooden door with a decorative grain that matches the ceiling.
A glass door fronted elevator was added to the ground and first floor of this Malibu home that was designed by American designer Geoffrey von Oeyen.
Von Oeyen extended the home and incorporated a paired back interior palette that was comprised of light wood panelling, dark stone floors and white walls. The elevator, which is located to the right of the front entrance, allows visitors with limited mobility to easily access the home’s renovated media room.
A former water tower in Utrecht was converted into a series of apartments that have 360-degree views of the city. Dutch studio Zecc Architecten retrofitted the building and added the largest of its apartments, a six-level home, to its very peak.
A private elevator, located within a white volume and beside a floating staircase, provides access to the six-floor apartment and opens out to an entrance space that features a rusted metal convexed ceiling constructed from the tower’s former water tank.
This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen’s archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring beige interiors, cosy cabins, save-saving and pocket doors.
Savvy homeowners are wise to consider kitchen remodeling categories where they can save a little here, to spend more over there. If you love your kitchen layout, cabinet boxes are in good shape and all you want is a little cabinet paint or refinishing touch-up – you may decide to avoid hiring a team of pros to perform cabinet refacing for you and get excited about all the money you can “save” with a DIY cabinet painting project.
However, before you get too excited, carefully weigh the pros and cons of such an endeavor.
Bespoke furniture with a mid-century feel can be rearranged to alter the use of this office space in north London, which interior design studio The Mint List has created for a music management company.
Camilla Kelly and Lucy Tudhope of The Mint List designed the headquarters for management company Everybody’s, which recently upgraded to larger premises on the ground floor of a former shipping depot.
Everybody’s office is located in a former shipping depot
Architect Duncan Woodburn developed plans to reconfigure the large, light-filled unit as an open-plan workspace including a high-ceilinged entrance along with a kitchen and dining area.
For the interior scheme, The Mint List focused on retaining the building’s existing character and creating a flexible workspace with a midcentury feel.
The Mint List designed custom joinery to divvy up the interior
“We wanted to ensure that we respected the modernist nature of this industrial site, whilst integrating a sense of creativity that was absolutely key for the client,” Kelly said.
One of the main challenges was zoning the large space to create different functional areas. This was achieved using custom-built joinery to separate self-contained yet open-plan spaces.
Modular furniture features throughout the office interior
Much of the joinery is modular, allowing the space to be reconfigured if required. Large storage units at the entrance are accessible from both sides and completely movable so they can be rolled away to create an open event space.
Most of the time, the units serve to separate the office from the entrance area and provide staff with a degree of privacy from visitors.
The office also houses a lounge for playing music
The main workspace is flooded with light that enters through the building’s glazed frontage. It contains desks and bespoke oak credenzas that can also be easily moved to completely clear the open-plan room.
At one end of the office is a kitchen with built-in storage, including coloured drawers and cupboard fronts that complement the African sapele wood joinery.
The kitchen contains bar seating next to the windows and a dining space arranged around a three-metre-long leather-topped artist’s table.
A full-height glazed wall specified by the client separates the workspace from private offices and a cloakroom on the ground floor, as well as a mezzanine that houses an acoustically sealed meeting room and a lounge for playing music.
Glossy tiles feature in the stairwell
“The brief was a seamless, vertical grid of glass,” explained Kelly. “So we helped to translate that in terms of the finishes – textured glass to obscure vision through to the office and a beautifully finished oak frame that complements the midcentury scheme.”
Throughout the project, The Mint List applied a palette of tactile and honest materials including sapele wood, oak, concrete and burnished brass.
The Mint List added wood surfaces and brass details
A colour scheme based on natural hues including greens, creams and earthy browns adds visual richness to the spaces.
The office’s Marmoleum flooring is a custom design that subtly separates the space into different zones. The renewable material was chosen for its excellent acoustic properties in order to help absorb sound within the open spaces.
The bathrooms are playfully decorated with colourful tiles
Bathrooms located on the ground floor feature retro sanitary- and brassware complemented by playful tiles, with each wall laid in different patterns and colours.
A backsplash can make – or break – your kitchen design. Okay. So maybe that is a little melodramatic; however, we will say that we’ve seen some mismatched backsplashes that would make you want to throw your hands up and say, “Holy Gnome!” The thing is, some things are better conceptually than they are in real life. And since kitchen counter backsplashes are (relatively) permanent, the best way to get one you’re happy with is to – well – get one that matches your countertop for gosh sake!
Whether you’re aiming for a luxurious and expensive look or you prefer a trendy kitchen on a small budget, you want to find the best way to match your countertop and backsplash successfully. Let us tell you a little story about Dick and Jane and help you resolve this kitchen remodeling mystery once and for all.
Architecture studio Gonzalez Haase AAS has completed a store on London‘s Regent Street for Icelandic clothing brand 66º North, featuring curved walls and freestanding plinths made from rammed earth.
The Berlin-based studio headed by Pierre Jorge Gonzalez and Judith Haase set out to create a holistic concept for the store that represents Iceland in an original way, rather than relying on stereotypes.
The shop interior was informed by Iceland’s volcanic landscapes
Gonzalez Haase AAS let the natural elements and the country’s geology inform key design features such as curved grey walls that evoke the shifting weather and rammed-earth islands that represent the earth.
“The weather in Iceland is a very real and prominent feature in the land and we classified this as static (the island) and forever changing (the weather),” the studio explained. “The static island of Iceland stands still in comparison to the constantly evolving and adapting weather, but this influences the perception of the island.”
Rammed-earth islands add colour and texture to the shop’s interior
Upon entering the space, visitors encounter a series of curved walls rendered in natural pigmented clay sourced from Cornwall in the south of England.
The designers said the use of different grey tones represents the changing weather: “the immaterial, movement, changing, blurry and informal”.
Grey walls represent Iceland’s shifting weather
The curved walls vary in height and frame different views within the store. At the entrance, one of the walls stretches back 18 metres, drawing the viewer’s gaze into the space and offering a tactile introduction to the experiential interior.
“These curved walls create different perspectives and atmospheres,” the design team added. “They sit in front of the existing white walls to create a dramatic foreground of rolling soft curves.”
A series of monumental rammed-earth islands are inserted throughout the floor plan, adding colour and texture that evokes the earth and magma of Iceland’s volcanic landscape.
The islands were created by artist Lennart Frank, who cast and sculpted them from an aggregate mix of different lava rocks to create a layered effect.
The islands were made from an aggregate mix containing different lava rocks
A combination of pigmented aggregate and sand gives the islands their reddish-brown hue, while the rugged texture brings a tactile element to the space that complements the brand’s clothing.
The earthy tones are echoed in the metal clothes rails, as well as in the colour of a carpet applied to the surfaces within a more intimate space at the rear of the store.
Earth-toned carpet was used in parts of the shop
A custom-made mesh ceiling was designed to evoke a misty white sky, while also concealing lights and technical equipment.
Mirrors and screens displaying films of the Icelandic landscape help to define the flow of movement through the space and add a playful dimension to the shopping experience.
The shop is located on Regent Street in London
Gonzalez and Haase founded their Berlin-based studio in 1999. The firm works on commercial, residential and cultural projects, developing spatial concepts and experiences that foreground the interplay between light and architecture.
Many people suffer from inadequate kitchen lighting, some even must deal with the dreaded over-lit kitchen. In a room as functional as the kitchen, lighting can make more of an impact on your productivity than you may expect. Thus, if you want to use the full potential of your cooking space and improve its functionality, make sure to add lights to the additions checklist.
A “psychedelic inverted cabin” provided Canadian studio Frank Architecture with the design narrative for this Japanese casual bar and restaurant in Banff, Alberta.
Located in the mountains of Alberta, Hello Sunshine offers barbecue, sushi and karaoke in a retro-influenced space by Frank Architecture.
Fireplaces sit at the centre of special tables at Hello Sunshine
The team imagined an alternate reality, in which Japanese graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo ventured into the mountains and holed up in a cabin for years, and based the interiors on what the result might have been.
“Taking cues from the unlikely juxtaposition of Japanese psychedelia meets spaghetti western meets mountain cabin, Hello Sunshine is bold, playful, and distinct,” said Frank Architecture, which has an office in Banff.
The wood-panelled restaurant features a rounded bar at the back
The eatery is located in the middle of the town, which is a popular destination for tourists and winter sports enthusiasts and is laid out to offer a sense of discovery.
“The spatial planning is intended to feel organic and meandering,” the team said. “Upon entry, the restaurant isn’t immediately visible but is slowly revealed as one moves through space.”
Japanese elements like paper lanterns and textile artworks and paired with plaid curtains and plenty of wood
The restaurant occupies a tall open space lined almost entirely in wood, with the rounded bar located at the back and a variety of table seating options scattered around.
Diners can choose between communal benches, four-tops, booths, bar stools, or sit at one of two special tables.
Booth seating is lined up against angled, shingle-covered walls
This pair of large circular counters both feature a raised fire pit at their centre, below fluid-shaped flues clad in glossy, glazed ceramic tiles.
Japanese design staples like paper lanterns and ceiling-hung textile artworks are combined with mountain tropes such as plaid curtains, exposed stone and plenty of wood.
Blue corduroy fabric is used to cover banquettes, while the booth seating is tucked into a niche formed by angled walls covered with timber shingles.
In the karaoke rooms tucked away at the back, patterned carpet, lava lamps and disco balls add colour and sparkle to the wood-panelled spaces.
Karaoke rooms are enlivened by disco balls and lava lamps
There’s also a concealed tiny bar based on those crammed into the alleyways of Golden Gai in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
“The result is a bold and encapsulating space that surprises and delights guests with unexpected moments and distinctive style,” said the team.
A tiny concealed bar is based on those found in Golden Gai, Shinjuku
This isn’t Frank Architecture’s only Japanese restaurant – the studio also created an intimate setting for the Lonely Mouth noodle bar in its other home city of Calgary.
For another spot in the Western Canada metropolis, the team drew inspiration from author Truman Capote to set a 1960s vibe at Major Tom on the 40th floor of a downtown skyscraper.
Kitchen remodel often includes the addition of a new dining room table – even if there’s no formal dining room to speak of. Or, we’ve found that a brand-new kitchen remodel makes the dining room look dull or outdated, calling for a new coat of paint and new pick-me-ups.
As people’s interest in ultra-organised homes shows no signs of abating, we’ve collected eight clutter-free kitchens with smart storage solutions in our latest lookbook.
Spearheaded by Japanese organisational guru Marie Kondo, well-organised interiors have become a global trend. In no room is this more evident than in the kitchen, where pantries are stocked up with decanted jam jars, spice racks are labelled and shelving units are customised to house specific utensils.
The following projects, which range from compact apartments to home extensions, use hooks, nooks, racks, shelves, cubby holes and display units to create tidy kitchens where not a grain is out of place.
Paolo Vimercati and Melanie Schubert of SAM Architects demolished a garage hidden behind several listed buildings in south London in order to create this mews house for themselves.
Designed to accommodate their “modern lifestyles”, the home’s interior is clad in vertical planks of charred larch and has plenty of open-plan spaces.
The kitchen has pink, blue and orange plywood units that are filled with cooking books and glassware, while a pegboard display area is used to hang crockery.
Space-saving storage solutions can be found in Fifth Avenue Kitchen, a compact New York apartment created by interior design studio Handwerk Art and Design for a client who works in the film industry.
Aiming to make the most of the 160-square-foot (15 square-metre) space, Handwerk retrofitted the kitchen with features including a pegboard wall for hanging mugs, aprons and other items.
“Starting with a study of their cooking habits and spatial needs, we designed a set of custom cabinets for the whole kitchen that placed everything specifically and precisely,” said the studio.
Plywood and planed softwood structures with square tiles characterise this playful galley kitchen designed by Nimtim Architects for a home extension project in Forest Hill, London.
A kitchen island features a tiled waterfall countertop above a sink and shelving. The kitchen walls were designed to be filled in to increase privacy, or easily removed to maximise open space depending on the family’s future needs.
This family home in Taiwan was reorganised by studio HAO Design so that its occupants could spend more time with each other. In the kitchen, the parents are able to watch their children play games or listen to them play the piano while they are making dinner.
High ceilings in the kitchen meant there was room for a large black steel storage rack to be hung above a white-tiled island. The cage-like storage system serves as a “visual focus” and can also be used to hold plants or kitchenware.
This former studio flat in Budapest was reorganised by Hungarian studio Position Collective to create an Airbnb property suitable for two guests. Rather than rearranging the layout – and mindful of the small budget – the studio installed a plywood furniture and storage system that caters to temporary occupants’ needs.
In the kitchen, it features a modular pegboard storage wall with adjustable shelves to showcase different pieces of local Hungarian art books, home accessories and cooking equipment.
London studio Nimtim Architects transformed a 1920s semi-detached house in Southwark using multifunctional plywood partitions with arched openings and alcoves for storing belongings.
A limited, neutral-toned material palette was employed in the kitchen, comprised of handmade terracotta floor tiles, laminated countertops and sustainably sourced plywood.
For the revamp of a flat in Stoke Newington, British interior firm Studio Merlin added an abundance of storage to form serene, clutter-free living spaces.
An opening in the living room connects the kitchen, where there’s a wall of deep-set IKEA cabinets with smokey blue door fronts and a seating nook. Above this, a series of pantry-style shelves means the owner can easily access jars of cooking ingredients.
Named after the peninsula of land that the residential complex sits on, this red home extension was constructed by Santiago-based architecture studio Guillermo Acuña Arquitectos Asociados using pine stilts.
An open-plan room in the heart of the home is a communal space designed for cooking and eating. Large pine shelves filled with ornaments and tableware line the walls.