Trends New Zealand Volume 34 No 3 | Page 58

Previous pages: When the owner bought this classic New York City loft in Soho, he called on Andrew Wilkinson Architect to gut and totally redo the interior. While the position of the kitchen in new interior was to some extent predetermined by the existing services, it needed to integrate with adjacent interior spaces such as the dining and the sunken living areas. Above: The kitchen sits off to one side of the interior space, preserving a sight line along the axis from the front of the building through to the hallway leading to the guest rooms, seen beyond the kitchen in this image. search | save | share at With an integrated kitchen, appliances such as the fridge and dishwasher are fitted with cabinetry panels rather than their own doors, so allowing the kitchen to have a more furniture-like look rather than a purely functional one. But in these days of open-plan design, there’s another way of looking at the term ‘integrated’ – the way the kitchen fits into the whole interior rather than making its mark as a separate element. That was the approach architect Andrew Wilkinson took in the design of the kitchen in a classic New York loft he was asked to completely renovate. “The owners wanted the new interior to be very social, so the kitchen needed to be designed to communicate openly with other spaces in the apartment, such as the sunken living room and adjacent dining area,” says Wilkinson. The siting of the kitchen in the reworked interior was largely determined by the position of the existing services. “It’s not a big component in the space, and sits off to the side because the owner