THE HEART OF THE HOME
Kitchen Design A Truly Culinary Creation
This fantastic Landmark homes testimonial from Karaka will inspire you to begin designing your own Landmark home!
“My family never felt so close.″ The well-known sentiment ‘the kitchen is the heart of the home’ couldn’t be more true for a renowned food stylist when it came to the design of her new home.
Requiring a design that would give her room to store her extensive collection of food preparation equipment, prepare luscious food dishes and photograph them too, the client’s lifestyle was an integral part in developing a stepped-style two-storey Design & Build in Karaka, Auckland.
From the onset, the kitchen would dictate how the design of the living space would evolve. The client wanted a kitchen space that was very much the centre focal point without being a dominant presence. The result is a kitchen area that is sophisticated and ultimately functional, but not showy.
Inspired by luxurious lifestyle kitchens often found in Hamptons holiday homes, the interior décor is washed in a crisp, clean white, with complementary pale grey shades on the walls. Stainless steel cookware and a polished marble-top island punctuate, giving the room a refined elegance without being overpowered.
Concealed behind white shuttered doors lies the client’s favourite space: a long scullery the length of the kitchen space, styled in matching décor, that’s filled with storage spaces, equipment and utensils, and is conveniently accessible from both ends.
Designed to fit
While the kitchen was the home’s centre, there were other fundamental considerations at play when it came to developing the design – namely the site shape on which they planned to build.
Triangular, and backing onto a reserve at the end of the sub-division, the floor plan needed to be big enough to accommodate the family of four and the client’s culinary requirements, while also being compact enough to work with the allocated space.
“It was about marrying lifestyle requirements with the practical considerations of the site, and the result meant developing really interesting indoor and outdoor spaces,” explains Landmark Homes franchisor Debbie Clarke.
While the two-storey home appears compact given its unique shape, it’s incredibly grand both inside and out.
The bedrooms and living zones have an uncluttered, structured flow to them and utilise right-angular spaces to create private sanctuaries in which to relax. This includes a study space that opens out to the paved garden, a living room that extends onto a covered deck and a private bath positioned to overlook the adjoining reserve.
The client also wanted to use these spaces to give her daughters something special in their rooms that made it feel like their own.
“A favourite feature was an egg-shaped swinging chair, which was suspended from a reinforced ceiling – specially included to ensure it could swing safely,” says Debbie.
Outside, a large in-ground pool occupies the rectangular space at the section’s longest edge; the pool-side sandy hued tiles continuing to a relaxed outside lounge area under a portico.
The remaining area around the home has been used to accommodate raised garden beds, filled with herbs and vegetables for the client’s iconic food dishes, with tussocks and small shrubs wrapping around the fence line of the home.
With the estuary adjacent to the property on three sides, the home feels much-removed from the sub-division in which it sits and brings a serenity to its very happy owners.
“It’s absolutely gorgeous, and one of the best aspects is that we have helped create a home that is very livable, despite the site challenges we were presented with.”
It was about marrying lifestyle requirements with the practical considerations of the site, and the result meant developing really interesting indoor and outdoor spaces.
