Futura Cucine Judy Kitchen Designs
18 December 2009
“Working Girl”
Well, now, if black worked for the bathroom, and earlier this week I was utterly convinced that it did, then black must work equally well for the kitchen. Certainly, I have seen any number of black appliances for the kitchen, from kitchen hoods to stoves, refrigerators, and sinks. So, if black appliances might be the concept, then why not black cabinets? It’s a wonderfully bold statement and worth a closer look, I think.
Futura Cucine is a Northern Italian company that I’ve written about before because they are very much on the cutting edge of kitchen designs, but I especially like what they’ve done with the Judy, which is one of their latest kitchen designs (all of the
ir kitchen designs have women’s names). It’s more than an expanse of black and red; it’s a kitchen that has been scientifically designed to get the absolute most out of a fairly small kitchen, which, I think, is true of most of the minimalist European kitchen designs.
We have so much room in the USA that it almost spoils us for anything other than one of those glorious thousand square feet fantasy kitchens that are so often the subject of TV kitchen design shows. Are they magnificent? Of course. No one denies that they are really just the sort of thing for those with the budget and room for such things, but there is a problem for those of us with somewhat more modestly-sized kitchens. Namely, how? Because unless you’re willing to undergo a major remodeling of your entire home, the small kitchen you end with will be the same small kitchen with which you began. But a small kitchen design need not be a drab one, which brings us back to the subject of today’s blog.
Futura Cucine has made some real breakthroughs with their Judy kitchen design, from the materials to the colors used, to the layout of the kitchen itself. The boldness of the color scheme really needs nothing further from me, but I would like to discuss some of the details of the kitchen itself.
For starts, all the surfaces of this glossy kitchen, including the countertops, are made of lacquered glass, which tends to make the kitchen appear quite a bit larger than it actually is. But beyond that there is a real logic to the flow of the kitchen itself. The stainless steel sink is completely integrated into the countertop and meshes perfectly with the black glass countertops. Despite the small space occupied by the kitchen, there is still plenty of counter space for food preparation, in part because of the location of the refrigerator and other appliances in the row of red cabinets that occupy the entire back wall of the kitchen.
The cabinets are unified by the aluminum frame that outlines both black and red glossy lacquered glass, but underneath all of the shiny exteriors is a highly functional kitchen design. The stainless steel core of the kitchen hood is sheathed in a refined elegance that makes this most necessary kitchen element a focal point for the kitchen, and the clutter-free exteriors hide wonderfully efficient storage units. It’s neat, it’s trim, it’s stylish, and it works. And that’s the main thing. It works. Because regardless of how innovative the kitchen design may be, a kitchen, much more than any other room in the house, just has to work, but the Judy, as I said, is very much a working girl.
Joseph
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