Kitchen

This Auckland villa’s kitchen blends modern style with a heritage feel

Thanks to extensive planning and considered material choices, this Auckland villa welcomes a new kitchen addition in a seamless merger

kitchen4

This Auckland villa’s kitchen blends modern style with a heritage feel

Architect: Jane Priest
Location: Herne Bay, Auckland
Brief: A functional kitchen for a growing family, with an island that faces the pool and deck to enable children to be supervised.

What were the biggest challenges?
The planning stage – the kitchen is located in the main thoroughfare linking the pool, garden and adjacent double-height living areas. The kitchen is very visible and needed to be an enduring design using high-quality, functional materials. The external sliding cedar shutters are an important feature as they control sun and privacy of the west-facing windows, which were essential for natural light and ventilation.

How did you integrate the kitchen in the middle level between the original villa and new living room?
The design focuses on clean lines, reading as a piece of furniture that would keep the space as open as possible and not interrupt sight lines through the house and into the garden. We chose materials to complement both the traditional features of the original villa and the modern lines of the new addition.

Tell us about the materials that were carried through.
The walls between the villa and new addition are tongue-and-groove, reminiscent of turn of-the-century solid timber panelling. The scullery door is ‘hidden’ within this and barely visible. Solid brass drawer pulls, tapware and foot rails reference the brass hardware of the original villa. The marble herringbone tiling in the island and scullery is a traditional pattern often used in heritage homes.