Furniture artisans at SplinterWorks, formed in 2009 by Miles Hartwell and Matt Withington in the South of England, show their "particular affinity with developing work that re-thinks how we prepare, cook and experience food" in this collection of inspiring kitchen designs that break the grid of the traditional shaped kitchen, and carries it through as a fully functioning yet more soulful place that can be appreciated in social settings as well as in routine daily tasks.
1 |To get a sense of the company’s aesthetics, take a look at ‘Tipping Point, a typical Splinterworks project.
Tipping Point is an optically arresting sculptural feat; appearing to defy gravity by impossibly balancing a huge leaning volume on a knife-edge. The highly reflective mirror-polished stainless steel heightens the visual weightlessness offering a gleaming, eye-catching pair of balancing arcs in perfect symmetry. The lustrous surface creates elegant elongated reflections of the surrounding environment, rendering the whole piece to appear almost invisible. The reflective nature of the work makes the piece easy to integrate into a living space, and the circular design creates a self-contained working area which is easy to place into an open plan space.
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4 |The company has completed projects all around the world, and specializes in unique commissions of applied art, where every detail is considered, and accomplished. Take the ‘dime’ composition for example, a unit based on the effect of a spinning coin, which appears to be as much of a sculpture as it is a functional piece, and the singular curving sheet of stainless steel that forms ‘The Wave’.
5 |‘The Wave’
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8 |Large kitchens present challenges in the planning of an effective workspace just as small ones do, furniture must be substantial in size to comfortably fill the area, yet should not cause a small task to take longer to execute as a result of a longer journey path; to combat this, the designers create intuitive zoning to make each typical kitchen activity effortless.
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11 |The cylindrical ‘Cink’.
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14 |“Wink’ evolved out of a study in geometric forms of two arcs”
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17 |SplinterWorks aren’t just kitchen experts though, other interesting projects include the elevated, hammock-like ‘Vessel’ bathtub, and the ‘Stiletto’ which can be utilized as a desk, a console table or a dressing table, and features a slender ‘stacked heel’ silhouette and iconic ‘red sole’.
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