Logos Kitchen Designs
23 October 2009
“Life Happens”
Man, this is just nothing but slick! I have recently encountered some of the most inspired kitchen designs I believe I have ever seen on the Internet. One of the things I am constantly looking for is innovative design, but not just design that is cutting edge. What I most have in mind is design that is different but that works, because in the end people actually have to live with these kitchen designs and live with them, given the price of a major kitchen remodeling, a very long time.
Well, sir! One of the companies I have just come across is Logos, which started as a small company in the Basque Country of Spain some fifty-seven years ago. Actually I perked up quite a bit when I read about their origins, because it almost sounds like they began in a garage somewhere, which is the birthplace of many a successful cabinetmaking business in this country. Of course, the down side of that is that there are a lot more garage-born cabinet shops that never get out of the garage! But Logos did, and did it, I think, because of their total dedication to making a superior product. Over the years they have developed a number of unique products, ranging from a door design to entire kitchen designs. And in 2008 they launched their most exciting concept of all, namely the Cooking&Living concept.
So, what is Cooking&Living, you ask. Well, as they put it on their website, it’s “families lingering over a meal, heated discussions, breakfasts in pajamas, bottles and baby food, recipes handed down through the generations, messages on the fridge, out-of-tune humming, grandma’s cookies, seeing the New Year in, midnight snacks…and many more moments that you will never forget.” It’s a room that very nearly transcends the concept of kitchens altogether to become, instead, a living space. Or is that, in addition, a living space? Well, the answer, really, is to see it in action, which is another facet of their website that I found fascinating.
I am impressed with not only the depth of their designs, but also with the fact that they show these concepts in use. I have seen any number of kitchens in show rooms that look like they would be just the thing, but you have to use a bit of imagination to figure out how these concepts are going to look in your home. Not so with Logos. If you browse through their website, you see a number of actual clients’ homes, containing both pictures of the final result and a case history of how they got there, this last being particularly enlightening.
One of the things I’ve always said about interior design is that the designer ought not to just impose his ideas on his clients, and this is especially true of those who design kitchens and baths. The designer who only knows about the “hot” products and colors does his clients an enormous disservice. And, when it comes time for the kitchen layout itself, if he simply reads off a list of kitchen guidelines and then rolls out a choice of doors and drawer fronts-c’mon, do people really make a living doing stuff like that? What designers should be doing, I think, is asking their clients lots of questions and then paying close attention to the answers they get. The result of that sort of collaboration is the best kind of kitchen of all, a kitchen that the clients would design for themselves, had they the talents of the kitchen designer.
I bring that up because Logos has clearly followed just such a course in designing the kitchen pictured in this blog. These clients love their work as lawyers, but what they most enjoy is family life with their two children, and what they wanted for their home was an open space that would enable them to both interact with others and keep an eye on their active children. Logos came up with a design that enables all that and more, using their Star model kitchen, which combines walnut wood with distressed white textured lacquer and a stainless steel counter that creates a cooking zone that seems suspended in the air. The end result is a kitchen that looks like nothing of the sort, because it has become integrated into the living room. Logos calls it Cooking&Living, because it is now a room where life happens. Say, what’s the Spanish for La Dolce Vita?
Joseph
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