LINLEY successfully won the Kitchen Over £100,000 Award in the International Design & Architecture Awards 2014, with a project from Austria.
For this project, completed in December 2013 LINLEY were asked to provide a kitchen in a private client’s chalet in the Austrian Tyrol. The client had worked with LINLEY in the past and knew that the company had recently diversified into Fitted Cabinetry incorporating Kitchens, Bedrooms, Media Rooms and Wine Rooms. Their brief was to fuse LINLEY’s quality cabinet-making with a contemporary kitchen design in order to complement the use of indigenous materials which characterise the interior of the chalet. Although a new-build, the exterior was designed to blend harmoniously with the surrounding architecture and landscape.
A key instruction from the client was to incorporate reclaimed Austrian Stone Hearted Spruce which is used as a defining accent in the rest of the chalet. Once selected, the timber was shipped back to the UK to the LINLEY workshop to the excitement of their cabinet makers who have never had to work with timber quite this ‘characterful’. The natural peculiarities of the material required incredibly careful selection and preparation. In collaboration with the client, it was reworked into this unique design before sending it back to Austria to be installed on site where it was then oil-finished with the grain enhanced by a secret blanching agent that the local joiners shared with the LINLEY team.
Locally supplied granite floors and Mystic Grey satino finished granite worktops add a cool contrast to the timber whilst beaten copper splashbacks and glass and steel appliances brings razor-sharp, cool character to the space. Of-the-moment appliances are housed neatly within the units to allow for both elegant and sometimes robust entertaining. The overriding effect, we feel we have achieved is a subtle juxtaposition between the clean contemporary design and the faithful careworn reclaimed timbers.
Photography by David Churchill