Trends New Zealand Volume 34 No 4 | Page 48

When a home’s interior already has a strong decorative feature, a designer has to be very careful about what else they introduce into the overall design. In the living areas of this contempo- rary home, the antique wood panelling is a particularly distinctive element. So when designer Marketa Ramage of Studio Italia was asked to design the kitchen for the space, she says it was important that it complement and not compete with this existing feature. “When we came to the project, the search | save | share at kitchen’s position was already allocated, so we worked with the owner to establish the feel and how the kitchen would transition into the rest of the interior,” she says. It was only after an initial scheme for the kitchen had been prepared that the owner decided to use the wood panelling to tie the home’s interiors in with natural bush and trees on the edge of the property. “At that point, we changed the kitchen finishes to a soft black and white, keeping everything simple so as to not overpower the panelling, which ran from the living area through to the kitchen bulkhead.” But the panelling didn’t just present an aesthetic consideration – it also provided a logistical challenge. “With the kitchen wrapping around all the panelled walls, and the benchtop extending alongside the dining and living area, everything needed to be designed to within a millimetre for it all to fit exactly.” The benchtop extension was another way to integrate the kitchen into the over- all space, but it also plays a part in meeting the owner’s request for a very practical