Snaidero Kitchens for Life
28 November 2008
“You Make Me Wanna Shout”
Mark Twain once said that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the same as the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, a quote I bring up because of the utter rightness of the name for the line of kitchens being featured in this blog. This line—and it’s only one line among many, all of them mind-blowing—is made by Snaidero an Italian company, who takes as their logo, Cucine per la Vita—kitchens for life. I poin
t that out because I have often heard in this country that kitchens are replaced, on average, every ten years, a statistic I most wholeheartedly protest, but it’s been adopted by so many people in the trade that kitchens are now being designed to last no longer than ten years. If that. OK, ignore that last statement. That’s the curmudgeon in me speaking.
But to return to the thought that started this blog, it came to mind when I decided to do a little Googling on Acropolis, which is the name Snaidero gave to this particular kitchen line. As it turns out, the literal meaning of Acropolis is “city on the edge,” so with just a bit of a twist, we can make that concept on edge, edgy concept, cutting edge concept. I bring that up because, viewed in that light, this just has to be one of the most apt names ever given to a product line.
I don’t know, man. I did the research for this week’s blogs on a Saturday night while the wife was away, and this was the last one I chose for the week. What I’m showing to you 
this week is really just one of I don’t know how many kitchens Snaidero has to choose from. Now granted, I’d done some heavy work on the house earlier in the day, and had been up for a long time, so I was tired and a little punchy by then, but I can honestly say that I sat in front of the monitor with my mouth open. I have never seen anything like this.
And it gets better, because these people did not make a one-design-fits-all scheme. For the Acropolis kitchen, as they do with all of their kitchen designs, they have the main design idea, then a number of variations for that design. Let me begin with a description of the elements in their main design.
The dramatic picture at the top of this blog is, of course, a bit of staging to display their wares. The second picture in this blog shows this same kitchen in its proper environment, with the round kitchen in front and the storage unit behind it, which contains the oven, refrigerator, and storage for dishes and food items. However, not everyone will want the configuration with the sink in the round island and a monolith storage unit. For them, there is a version with the sink in a more conventional-looking base cabinet and the rest of the items necessary to a kitchen cleverly integrated into the cabinetwork, although cabinetwork sounds so pedestrian when you’re discussing a kitchen design like this one.
Not a single element in this kitchen design has been left to chance. The stainless steel vertical support elements also hide the venting system and the electrical system. Switches and electrical outlets are in housings on the supports. The upper shelf contains a lighting system of LEDs which have been recessed into th
e surface.
Kitchen hoods are a particular interest of mine (because of the many possibilities they add to a kitchen design), so I found myself intrigued with how they handled it in this kitchen. Far too many hoods are little more than afterthoughts, there because they must be, but they add little to the kitchen design itself. Here the stainless steel cylindrical hood is the focal point of the whole circular composition.
Brilliant is a word that we can certainly ascribe to the shiny stainless steel that makes up this composition—it’s hard to think of it as a mere kitchen design—but, really, it is undoubtedly the one word in the lexicon that best describes what Snaidero has done with their Acropolis kitchen. No, let’s do better than that. Let’s shout it out. BRILLIANT!
Joseph
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