Architect Chris Schmitt has long pondered the question of how to gracefully design a kitchen as part of a great room. “When I started designing houses, I found it hard to put the kitchen into a space the scale of the dining and living areas without it looking ‘stuck into’ the room,” he says. Luckily he remembered a graduate school class that focused on the concept of buildings within a building, and used that as his takeoff point for this South Carolina Low Country home. By dropping the kitchen into the great room in a permeable box, he treated it as its own building within the rest of the house. Walls of horizontal wood slats make up two sides of the kitchen’s container. They provide separation from the great room while allowing light and fresh air to filter in. A third wall possesses glass-paned cabinets and an ample pass-through to further knit the kitchen and great room together. The fourth, structural wall holds the oven, refrigerator, and extra storage.
A recycled heart pine frame gives the box more definition without blocking the kitchen off from the great room. At 8 feet tall, the enclosure measures the same height as the overall space’s doors, windows, trim, and wainscoting, and a yard lower than its 11-foot ceilings.
Project Credits
Builder: Cambridge Building Corp., Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Architect: Schmitt Sampson Walker, Charleston, S.C.
Project size: 224 square feet
Construction cost: Withheld
Photographer: © Rion Rizzo/Creative Sources Photography Resources: Cabinets: Kitchencraft; Dishwasher: Miele; Garbage disposer: Franke; Plumbing fittings: Moen; Plumbing fixtures: Kohler; Oven: Jenn-Air; Refrigerator: GE Appliances.
