FD|A was asked to reorganize the kitchen and laundry room and update the dated material palette.

Our design intent was to create a spatial hierarchy by defining and separating the front of house and back of house spaces. Once separated, we then proceeded to define each space separately based on its function. This allowed for a clear division of space, while maintaining a continuity and logic through the material palette and method of detailing.

We defined the front of house spaces as the dining room, family room and kitchen; to create a relationship between the three spaces, we separated the island from the wall to improve the circulation and visual continuity. We decided to treat each wall of the U-shaped kitchen separately based on its function as storage, preparation or cooking. This approach created three conditions: a wall of cabinets, countertop with upper cabinets and cooktop with oven and open shelving. The storage wall is expressed as a thickened cabinet wall contains that the pantry, refrigerator and appliance garage. This thickened wall terminates in the bar, which provides a perpendicular anchor to the cabinets in plan and opens itself visually to the connected rooms. Parallel to the cabinet wall is the preparation area and the two are connected by the cooktop and stove. To provide additional natural light and distinguish the space, we shaped the existing skylight to cover a majority of the ceiling above the kitchen.

We defined the back of house spaces as the bathroom, office/desk, basement stairs, garage access and laundry room. These spaces are treated as functional service spaces that can be hidden from the front of house when necessary. The sliding door that separates the front of house and back of house spaces is detailed as a wall with baseboard, so that it can be shut while entertaining to separate the spaces and turn the kitchen and dining room into more formal spaces.