Ordinarily, it could be intimidating designing a kitchen for a designer. After all, your ideas and theirs may be completely at odds and it’s easy for creative egos to lock horns. But, fortunately, we know the owner of this kitchen rather well, as she’s the graphic designer whom we entrusted with the SpaceCraft brand. So, after years of working together on ideas and aesthetics, it was truly a pleasure to create this kitchen for Kellie, her husband, Scott, and young son, Chet. Especially as we’d already had a ‘practice run’ building the kitchen for their first home in 2009.

The challenge.

To up the ante, Kellie isn’t the only creative one in the family: Scott is a sound engineer and musician. So, style and taste were always going to be critical factors in this project. But, having worked with them both before on the their previous smaller home – and knowing them very well – we were looking forward to the challenge of fashioning something to last in their ‘forever’ home.

This home in Hawthorn was built in the mid-twentieth-century with that lean, clean modernist style that Mad Men brought renewed attention to and which is deservedly so popular right now. The main challenge we faced with this project, however, was one of our old adversaries: space. The kitchen was very long and narrow, making preparation space a premium, and it was separated from the living area by a dividing wall.

Apart from that, their brief was simple: Kellie and Scott wanted it beautiful (of course) but functional; classic rather than faddish; a colour to feature rather than white blandness; not too much timber, which would clash with the home’s existing features; and, finally, a contemporary nod to the mid-century.

Easy peasy.

The first thing Nathan suggested was to knock out the dividing wall to open everything up, giving Kellie the open-plan living she really wanted, as a keen cook and entertainer. And when the ‘Berlin wall’ finally came down, the transformation was extraordinary: suddenly, there was space and light aplenty. This allowed us to create a lovely open-plan kitchen/ dining/ living area that is perfect for both relaxed entertaining and family enjoyment.

To accentuate the length of the room, Nathan used a full-length kitchen counter and a parallel dining table as a centre piece. The kitchen wall is divided into two clever zones with joinery that feels more like furniture. At one end is the food-preparation area with an appliance nook built in to give easy access to frequently used appliances such as the coffee machine, kettle and toaster but hide them when not in use; up the other end is a buffet for display. The simple, clean lines and streamlined design might have been a bit stark if it weren’t for the cool blue cabinetry.

Aesthetics were always going to be important but Nathan would never design a kitchen that didn’t work as well as it looked. So, he’s added some exquisite little touches that really finish this kitchen off whilst making it work brilliantly. For instance, ordinarily, in most kitchens, a pull-out bin is accessed by a single panel door. But here, Nathan created a mock drawer-face with the automated servo-drive bin hidden behind it, so the drawer line is continued seamlessly with a horizontal black shadow line.

All of which just proves that no matter whether you’re designing a brand or a kitchen, the best result will always come from due consideration for both form and function. Which is why Kellie and Scott love their new kitchen and we love what she does for SpaceCraft.