I have always wanted to live in and experience an Italian castle or villa, with totally modern fittings and furniture inside. Not the villa with intricate, highly ornamental frescoes, but a really old worn down one sporting raw stone walls . . . more grotto like than frescoed. Of course, I would not want to worry about keeping it warm and dry, that would all be taken care of before I took ownership.
And here is one of the kitchens I could imagine having there. A perfect sphere of stainless, translucent, and black when closed, and a workable very small kitchen when open. And I’m not even a bachelor, although it seems to holler “James Bond” or his 21st century equivalent.
Not this, which is charming and a wonderful kitchen renovation in Tuscany,
But this, inside the castle above.
Or in one of these, my best grotto dreams.
It does take a decent sized outlier for storage, of a couple of chairs, tabletop ware, and an oven.
Here is how it works: A top view of the work surfaces reveals sinks, a cooktop, and hotplate. So we are not cooking for a group, we are entertaining a special person. Any serious large scale cookery would be done before, offsite, or in a galley below.
A small outrigger for storage rolls right up to where you want it for a drawer full of utensils.
The concept of high contrast is really at play. Do you prefer this slick and minimal kitchen in an old world setting, a villa in Italy? Or for you, does it scream for the white walls and black floors of a highrise in New York?
Let us know where you envision yours!
(Cost? It compares to a complete, more standard, new kitchen or renovation.)
Next week, speaking of transparency….something I’d never dreamed of in any kitchens.
Proud to say Robert Zachry was architect on the 2016 Parade of Homes residence that took the Grand Hacienda Award
Robert, my husband, worked closely throughout the whole process, beyond design and engineering, with builders Scott and Maika Wong of Solterra. The home won two other awards one for Best Design, making us proud again. The home, on Aspen View in the Monte Sereno area of Santa Fe was on a six day tour in August, hosted by the owners. A very gracious thing to do, as between two and three thousand people walk through, asking a few standard questions, a few thousand times. At the end of six days you find yourself saying things like, “Yes, that is a floor.”
The home is sited to capture panoramic views. There were initial steep site issues to overcome, as well as subdivision covenants to adhere to. Glass and steel answer the first. Color palette speaks to the second. This is something that I work on a lot.
About the glass and steel, Zachry said, “We wanted a slim way of supporting that part of the house because the mountain views are so spectacular, so we used wide flange columns (aka W beams similar to the old I beams) that are load-bearing and exposed on the interior. Then there is solid insulation between that and a C-shaped steel channel so it appears as one solid beam. You don’t see the column sandwich because the window flange covers the joint where the insulation is. It’s a lot like the bark on a tree. The trunk supports everything, and the bark is the trim.”
The original design called for overhangs on the glass and steel cubes, but anything approaching a cantilever is discouraged in the covenants, enforcing that they really want traditional Southwest adobe looking architecture. “You can’t cantilever more than a half an adobe brick, right?” said the architect.
The main corridor runs north-south capturing the views of the Sangre de Cristos all along the glass walls to the east, as well as the sweeping badland’s red and ochre cliffs and gullies to the north.
“We wanted to make sure that as you get up in the morning and go to the kitchen to make coffee, and on to the living room to enjoy it, and then into the adjoining office, you are slammed with that view in every one of those experiences.”
And the kitchen you work in is something else. Simple as it looks, it did also win Best Kitchen at the awards banquet. Clean and uncluttered to the world and serving side, it also has a back kitchen where all the counter top appliances live, and do not have to be put away when company comes. Convenient and beautiful, and a top level early request of the homeowner who uses the kitchen the most.
I’ll be going into fantastical futuristic food preparation features in a forthcoming post. Stay tuned.
Last week, the principals of the popular interior design firm Reside Home—Kendra Henning, Jeff Fenton and Chris Martinez— hosted their monthly broadcast, which focuses on a variety of design trends, events, and personalities.
“Design Commitment/Fear of Commitment”: Kendra, Jeff and Chris discussed this interior design theme with designer Edy Keeler of Edy Keeler Interiors, of Core Value Inc.. Focus was given to many of the permanent finishes to a home that require a major commitment from clients, including the installation of cabinets, counter tops, tile, flooring, and paint colors.
This is all about the big decisions that are required when building new construction, an addition, or a major remodel. While preparing for the show, we likened this to real-life relationships:
- Furniture and accessories might be considered “casual dating” – if it doesn’t work out, you’re disappointed, but not devastated. You can try again and you didn’t waste a lot of time or resources.
- The “big-ticket” items we’re talking about today are more like marriage – if it doesn’t work out you could get divorced, but it’s messy. Lots of lost time, and probably money too!
To listen to the show, please follow the link below to the episode page on Santafe.com.
Click here for the episode.
Step by step guide to being a designer on a new construction project in Santa Fe
This is Step 4- Lighting up a home and a life
Natural Light
Almost no one argues that lighting is vital. Natural light being the gold standard in our mountain west environment. If we are thinking well in the structural design phase, we let it in from the best vantage points for views, for warmth, good feelings, and health. South facing windows with the right overhangs, west facing glazing with even deeper overhangs. And we usually use more modest fenestration to the east for morning sun in kitchens and bedrooms, and not as much at all to the north, unless a stunning mountain view demands it.
Hopefully the architect has tended to all those openings. What I am most often tasked with is the interior lighting and the night time exteriors, done best in step with a landscape architect.
Architectural Lighting
Architectural lighting, that which is part of the structure, is not purely decorative, and is best when the fixtures disappear and the light itself is the object, is the backbone of the plan. On this project three types of fixtures will be used throughout.
A straight recessed downlight, only 4” in diameter, and available in several finishes, most likely the brushed nickel, but the bronze is possible too.
There will be areas for art that require something that can drop down and rotate to several directions, and this will be minimal and flexible.
And for something that is even more “aimable,” we chose a small spot mounted on the side of beams, which will work best. Hopefully with an LED lamp.
Functional Decorative Lighting
The more decorative lights, all still highly functional, start with the bathroom vanity lights.
This is a thin piece of Lexan with an LED (light emitting diode) strip light at the rear of it, with a brushed nickel backplate to match the plumbing fixtures. We will place one over each basin in the master, for excellent light and color rendition.
For the guest bathroom, we’ve chosen a fixture so minimal that it is hard to appreciate it in online pictures. The Rae Suspension is an LED tube, dimmable, that provides wonderful light, especially when hung in front of a mirror, to double the light source.
And this “ice cube” will probably light the mirror in the powder room, either as a wall sconce as shown, or as a pendant beside the mirror or possibly on either side of the mirror.
I actually love these very non-serious vanity lights, but they were deemed a little over the top for this home!
Ultimately, there will be some decorative lights, also functional, in the form of three single light pendants over kitchen island seating, and other serving counters.
Because the dining table may be moved around a bit for entertaining groups, we won’t have a pendant or chandelier over the table in this home.
Finally, for the interior, there are some hallways and other areas that would benefit from something simple and sleek casting a pool of light reflected off the wall, but not particularly attention getting as they may share walls with art pieces.
Outdoor Lighting
Exterior lighting on this contemporary home will also be classically simple. Because of our local Dark Skies ordinance, and the subdivision requirements, all light must be projected downward, nothing up and nothing straight out. These two are in compliance. We’ll use the larger one at primary entries, and the smaller at secondary entries like near garages.
After we have a final landscape plan, we will choose similarly simple ground lights, on 12” stems. In the courtyard walls and retaining walls there will be recessed step lights. Any of these will suffice but I will research which shed the most light and have the longest lamp life.
We’re leaving selection of the decorative lights for over the Kitchen areas until later, when we have picked the palette for plaster walls and any painted areas. For the builders who will be bidding on building the home, I’ll put in an allowance for those final decorative fixtures.
Architectural, functional and decorative wall lighting will always need supplementing with portable lighting — floor lamps, table lamps, desk lamps. This gives the home enough different light levels for visual interest and appeal. But that comes when we work on furnishings, about a year away. For now, we have a plan to light up a new home!
For lighting design examples, please click here.
Step by step guide to being a designer on a new construction project in Santa Fe
This is Step 3- Plumbing is Essential
Plumbing: the toilets, the sinks, the tubs, and the showers, is one of the essentials of course, and a place to blow the budget, or compromise the budget to the point of needless and endless repairs before the useful life of the project is spent.
This couple wants quality, but not at any price, and has a definite clean and modern aesthetic. A desire that can be more costly, we’ve found over the years, than one that is more decorative. Those frills, in both plaster wall styles and plumbing fixtures, can hide a lot of glitches.Here is the aesthetic, and following, the items we are sourcing to play with in this first go around.
We’re needing a tub with clean lines, but don’t necessarily want to pay over five figures for it. We also need a different set-up for the tub-filler and controls. The clients do not want to have to lean over a wide tub to start filling it. So we are settling on this floor mounted option which will be at the end of the tub, near the entry to the shower room.
And this tub, more in line with this budget, and delivering just about the same look.
Now, the all important toilet decisions. No one likes to clean around a toilet, especially one with lots of curves in the base. So how about no base at all? Wall hung toilets deliver on all fronts: easy to clean around, and sleek looking. The guts have to go in the wall, and the operator on that wall. So, do we have a location where we can get into that wall, and have an access to it on the other side? Yes and yes. So it will go at least into the powder room.
Also in the powder room, something of stone that is warm and earthy, and goes with very simple clean tile that is definitely not stone and so offers easy upkeep. This travertine bowl, carved out of one piece of stone, has an eccentric offbeat shape that we like, and marries up with a simple man made tile—no sealing, easy to maintain.
Step by step guide to being a designer on a new construction project in Santa Fe
This is Step 2- Working with architects and community guidelines
Review with the architect and clients. This is for the home in the Santa Fe north side subdivision with multiple homeowner’s association guidelines to meet. We try to review client selections with the architect soon after we make initial decisions to see if there are questions or concerns. Whether we have strong objections or positive responses, either way will affect further choices we’ll be making. In this case we have the base color but still have two concrete colors to narrow down to one. The clients want to take them to the site on their own and think about it.
What we are doing at this meeting is discussing what accent color we might use, and most importantly where do we want to use it. Overuse of an accent color is a mistake, as it dilutes the point of having an accent at all, and makes a project look choppy or “polka-dotty,” not good things visually. You may notice this on lots of projects, but we try not to do it.
One big plus is that we can use accent colors that the homeowner’s association might nix from a street view, if we use it on a private outdoor space wall that is hidden from the street, but is seen through living room glass that surrounds a fireplace.
Another option is to use either a dramatic darker accent, or an appreciably lighter one, on the “links” — passageways between larger masses — between the garage and the main living area, for example, at B. And between the main living area and the private bedroom suites at C. This would emphasize the architectural feature and we all like the idea.
Here, shaded in red, are the minimal areas we are discussing…optimally, I’d go wild as these are small accents, relatively speaking, but we are not sure they will appreciate that. Stay tuned..it is a process, and this is where I can begin to have fun.
One note, we are hoping to do glass panels on the three garage doors. The space will be used partially as a workspace, and the northern light would be awesome if the doors are opaque glass.
