Built in 1989, this home beautifully followed through with its rotated square design. No room was a completed rectangle, and all rooms had triangular features, creating interesting and unexpected spaces both indoors and out that connected and flowed into and through each other. This was true everywhere except in the center of the house where it was most needed. The kitchen locked itself into a square with one access point and little visual connection to the living room, dining room, family room, or entry. For this young family of 4, the kitchen is the center around which most daily life rotates. They love to cook and want to remain close and accessible to each other.
By thinking of the kitchen not as a separate space but rather as a means to stitch it all together, we expanded the footprint beyond the original walls, reaching just slightly across thresholds to adjacent rooms, allowing us to link them all together. Multiple flooring changes were replaced with continuous wood flooring throughout, to reinforce the space being connected. Rose painted accents are used across each of the larger kitchen elements creating interest and highlights in a new unified space.
The centerpiece is a monumental island that serves as the stitch planting a foot in both the family room and the atrium. The multi-angled island not only works with the direction of the walls of the space it encapsulates, but it also provides different places for sitting, washing, or prepping. The home is now opened up and reconnected to support the family in the way they want to live.