Mixed and warm material palette leads the way

While a well-designed kitchen must meet the functional needs of its owners, the process doesn’t always have to start with the practicalities. Sometimes, an object the owner wants to place in the finished space can turn out to be the starting point.

When designer Mick De Giulio was asked to create the kitchen shown here, the owner already had a very distinctive dining table and chairs that she wanted to include. As a result, De Giulio says he felt he needed to design the kitchen around them.

“We wanted to do something mixed and warm, so we got into the materials right away,” he says.

Based on the table’s striated top, he selected a warm white finish for the island cabinetry and overhead cabinets, stainless steel for underbench cabinets in the cooking zone, and a subtly veined quartzite for the countertops and backsplash.

A full-height bank of pantry cabinetry to one side of the kitchen adds a darker tone, with its panels in fumed Eucalyptus. 

But, here, De Giulio also breaks away from the simple symmetry established in the layout of the island and the cooking zone.

“Each of the pantry panels is a different size, so that wall is skewed from the rest of the kitchen in terms of its finishes and proportions,” he says.

Similarly, on the wall opposite, there are variations in the size and handle design of three tall cabinets that house the fridge, freezer and more pantry space.

Throughout the kitchen, the cabinetry is framed by wide silicon bronze channelling, that not only introduces a warm metallic tone, but also helps reduce the visual mass of the banks of cabinetry.

And while the table provided the starting point for the kitchen’s resulting material palette, that material palette then sparked the finishing touch on the hood.

The owner – an established artist – painted a canvas that picks up on tones throughout the kitchen, and this was mounted on the hood with a Plexiglass covering for protection.

“It pulls in the warmth of the bronze, wood and stone, and brings them together in a very abstract way,” says De Giulio.

Story by: Paul Taylor

Photography by: Dave Burk