Copyright Greg Mix & Associates Architects Inc., A.I.A., 770-806-8866, gregmix@Comcast. net
The Church Residence Kitchen Remodel
This
is a new kitchen addition to an existing Frank Lloyd Wright style home, designed
by one of his students, which sits on a beautiful wooded hillside on a lake in
Tucker, Georgia. Originally the home had a very small round kitchen, built out
of stone, without windows. The
owners wanted to replace it with a larger kitchen with windows to take advantage
of views of the lake and wooded hillside. We
wanted to work with the original style of the home and enhance the exterior
appearance. One prerequisite was
the use of similar materials throughout. This
included matching stone, cedar and glass on the outside, and stone flooring and
mahogany on the inside.
Going
to a rectangular kitchen with a rectangular roof helped extend the horizontal
lines of the home. Horizontality is in keeping with the design philosophy
of Frank Lloyd Wright. Placing
corner windows in the new kitchen also helped to connect the indoors to the
outdoors and “undo the box”, another concept of Wrights.
We also used chains, instead of downspouts to channel water from roof
drains to dry creek beds below. Thus
avoiding the need for gutters. The
dry stone creek bed is part of the original Japanese landscape that the owners
have created over the years and was incorporated into the site.
The requirements for the interior space were to provide a high-end gourmet kitchen while again matching the original materials of the house. These materials include a Georgia sandstone floor, mahogany cabinets and stainless steel hardware. For example, the bars at the new island are cut from a 4-inch thick fourteen foot long piece of mahogany. The theme of the sandstone floor was tied in by using the same material for the backsplash. Appliances included stoves and ovens by Gaggenau and an overhead ventilation system by Thermador. The kitchen has two separate workstations, with two separate sinks, a “His” and a “Hers” in each corner window. The Owners selected all of these features including the colorful teardrop light fixtures over the sinks. The Architect, Greg Mix, incorporated these features into the design. “Our design process is focused on creating a beautiful design while giving the client exactly what they want,” says Greg Mix.
Copyright Greg Mix & Associates Architects Inc., A.I.A., 770-806-8866, gregmix@Comcast. net