With its high vaulted ceiling and elevated views of the San Francisco Bay, the kitchen of this new Hillsborough, Calif., house was destined to be the focal point of daily life for its owners, a couple with school-age children. “They also love to cook,” says San Francisco-based interior architect Lorissa Kimm, “so the kitchen being the center of the home was pretty important to them.”
To ease management of the busy family’s comings and goings, Kimm designed a tidy “command central” that puts communication, computing, and scheduling right at the hub of activity. Recessed into a wall of 10-foot-high zebrawood pantry cabinets, the office niche gives the impression of having been hollowed out from a solid mass of the material. “We made sure the grain was as continuous as possible from panel to panel,” Kimm points out.
The orientation of the grain also serves the home’s overall scheme. “The horizontality,” she adds, “emphasizes the panoramic aspect of how the house relates to the view.”
