A sophisticated, streamlined kitchen with sweeping views

When you have a busy work life, you need an easy home life, and a well-designed kitchen is the key to making this a reality. The kitchen designed for Double-Halo House by Studio Snell needed to suit the high-end home’s sense of style and sophistication, but also had to be low-maintenance and intuitively easy to use.

“The homeowners wanted the kitchen to be the heart of the home,” says architect Joe Snell. “With their Greek heritage, cooking and entertaining are a major part of their lives and it was important that the kitchen was in the middle of the action, connected to the living, dining and daily traffic off the house.”

Importantly, the kitchen needed to feel connected to the pool and outdoor areas, complement the dining and living areas, and allow anyone using or gathering in the kitchen to take in the home’s spectacular views over Sydney. Functionality as a working kitchen was also key, says Joe, and it needed to have a good-sized, functional pantry.

The kitchen features Polytec Melamine cabinetry in natural oak to tie in with the bespoke natural oak cabinetry in the adjacent living area and elsewhere in the house.

The Dekton Orix benchtops match the splashback in the main kitchen and butler’s pantry, along with the statement-making island bench. The elegant benchtops and island may look like marble but Dekton is actually a durable cement product that won’t fade over time, and is scratch-, heat-, and stain-resistant. It doesn’t get much lower maintenance than that, and the island is one of the homeowners’ favourite kitchen features.

The homeowners also wanted stool seating on both sides of the island bench to encourage communal food prep and conversation, Joe says, along with informal quick dinners that didn't need to be eaten at the dining table.

Most of the appliances are integrated into the cabinetry to streamline the kitchen and deliver a polished appearance.

“We wanted the kitchen to merge with the living room joinery to read as one cohesive, warm and sophisticated background to the living and dining spaces,” Joe says, explaining that integrating the appliances gives it a look more along the lines of furniture or joinery when not in use.

“Along this theme is the pantry door which is hidden when closed to create a continuous joinery aesthetic, but is then able to stand open and enable fully functional to-and-fro access,” Joe says. When the pantry door is open, the architect was careful to ensure what was revealed was aesthetically pleasing to someone looking in from the island or dining area - a feature black glass wine fridge and complementary joinery is all they can see.

The Liebherr fridge and freezer and Siemens dishwasher are all integrated, while the Miele built-in wall oven and steam oven are stacked in a bold black. The Siemens Induction Cooktop adds to the streamlined look, not to mention being easy to clean - an essential part of the brief. An Azuma gas hob, meanwhile, brings versatility to the cooking experience.

All appliances in this capable kitchen were supplied by Winning Appliances, as were the black tapware, black sink and Zip Hydrotap - delivering boiling, sparkling or chilled water at the touch of a button.

This kitchen also makes life easier with an Insinkerator, Vintec bar/wine fridge and, of course, a coffee machine!

The kickboards, kitchen stools and island feature light adds more black accents to the kitchen, and tie in with the home’s interior colour scheme.

“This kitchen is great because it enables great cooking and great conversation, while being fundamentally pragmatic,” Joe says. “Aesthetically it works well in the overall space by creating a sophisticated background to the homeowners’ life both when it’s in use and when it isn’t.”

Read more about Double-Halo House and browse exceptional kitchen products by Winning Appliances

Words by Joanna Tovia