Tuesday, 11 November 2008

Interview with Homes & Gardens, October 2008

Last month, award-winning luxury kitchen designer Simon Bray was interviewed by Homes & Garden magazine. The magazine was seeking the opinions of leading kitchen, furniture and interior designers on the theme of The Living Kitchen.

Homes & Garden: What does the concept of living kitchens mean to today’s consumer?

Simon Bray: A well designed kitchen today is the hub of the house and family life. The walls that divided a house into small spaces with specialist functions are coming down along with the walls that divided the sexes and the generations. It has been happening for a while with many houses already having kitchen-dining rooms, but now it is going further and kitchen-dining is becoming kitchen living. To function as a space for modern family life, it must be adapted to our multi-faceted yet more integrated lives.

Key requirements nowadays are that the kitchen performs brilliantly as a place to prepare meals, to entertain and live in and, crucially, that it looks stunning. Beauty inspires; beauty in the kitchen inspires us to cook, inspires us to think and inspires us to entertain and have fun. Without beauty life is less enjoyable.

The living kitchen needs to be practical in terms of storage, work areas, people traffic and interaction and to be a kitchen that works on many levels: as a venue for entertaining, a warm welcoming snug; a café bar for when friends drop by, a place to do homework, a romantic dinner venue for two. Fusing modern aesthetics, ergonomics and functionality with traditional veneers, materials and ambience, which match the character of each individual house or apartment, the kitchens I design are modern English kitchens which cater for today’s multi-faceted living.

H&G: role does ergonomics play in the living kitchen?

SB: A crucial one. I use a lot of curves in my designs; they enhance both the beauty and ergonomics of the kitchen. I design curves into my kitchens to help the flow of people around the space and to create a more welcoming and comfortable environment. For example, an inviting and sociable area can be incorporated into the room by shaping the back of the island and installing a glass bar. It becomes a natural place for family and friends gather and the kitchen comes alive.

H&G: What demands does the living kitchen place on design, entertainment, technology and lighting?

SB: Practically all of the kitchens I design today are to be used for entertaining and relaxing in. This means the perfect solution is more complex than that for a kitchen that is only used to cook in. More and more of my clients are also requesting large TV systems in the kitchen. The kitchen must be very easy to work in and should also have excellent storage to ensure that it is easy to keep clean and tidy. It has to be beautiful with excellent and flexible lighting to create the right moods and yet needs to have enough room devoted to the dining area to ensure that it is not cramped and claustrophobic.

To create the right environment for dining in the kitchen the cabinetry needs the warmth of the living room rather than the cool utilitarianism of the commercial kitchen. One way that we achieve this is by designing our kitchens to appear as a number of free-standing pieces of furniture that have been connected together by more simple sections, a design principle that we call connected free-standing. This will involve mixing materials and textures to differentiate the pieces and the result will be a practical modern kitchen with natural warmth. With an excellent, flexible lighting scheme the kitchen can be transformed from a workshop to a superb room for entertaining with the flick of a switch.

For press enquiries contact:
Anne Stabler
Tel: 01428 707 301
Email: astabler@annestabler.com