Karaka Kitchen

This kitchen was designed for a beautiful, authentic Italian-styled country villa – and this aesthetic had a major influence on our vision for its reincarnation. Located at one end of a large rectangular room that also contains a large dining table, a casual family room, and access out to a loggia, it functions for most of the time as a normal family kitchen. However, our clients regularly entertain larger groups, including multiple generations of the family, who will often all work in the kitchen, preparing food and spending time together. It therefore had to have excellent workflow, abundant storage, much more than the usual number of appliances. But it also to feel relaxed and welcoming when it was just the family. Throughout the renovation process, there were many design challenges, including accommodating the extra appliances, and also integrating the plumbing, electrical, aircon and central vacuum pipe work into the bulkheads above and behind the wall cabinets, as the floors, ceiling and floor are all solid masonry. The new kitchen has a rich and varied palette of materials, in-keeping with its Italian heritage, including hand-painted finishes on the cabinetry, aged bronze and black wrought iron detailing, honed granite benchtops, natural oak shelving, and the bold use of multiple glass pendant lights. This was a large and complex kitchen to conceive and design, and great deal of time was spent on interpreting the brief and transferring that information into the working drawings. The result is a hard-working kitchen, capable of accommodating a number of cooks at one time, with efficient flow in all the work centres. It can also cater for large groups with ease, whilst still being a lovely family kitchen. The rich and varied mix of materials and fittings gives a warm, relaxed café feel, and it fits perfectly within the architecture of the home.