The high-end home's newest great room....??

The Kitchen That Ate the House

The high-end home's newest great room features plush furniture, fireplaces, multiple flat screens—and a few carefully hidden appliances. Just look for the cook's dirty secret in the next room.

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By CANDACE JACKSON

Some buyers feel that parties always end up in the kitchen, so why not cut to the chase, and design a kitchen large and attractive enough to become a party venue itself? Photo: Jeff Elson

Earlier this year, builder/architect Mohamed Hadid put the final touches on a 5,000-square-foot space in Beverly Hills, Calif., with whitewashed oak and limestone floors, hand-carved crystal chandeliers, two flat-screen televisions, a dining table that can seat 16 and a large couch overlooking a sleek gas fireplace. The space, which opens to manicured gardens outside, isn't a new estate home. It's a kitchen.
Long the de facto central gathering space of the home, the kitchen has ballooned in size in recent years to become the new great room. At the highest end, some are over 3,000 square feet, outfitted with walk-in refrigeration rooms, multiple seating areas, wet bars and fireplaces, with fixtures and décor intentionally designed to look like hip living rooms. In some cases, much of the actual cooking is being relegated to a second, smaller kitchen space, so that the main kitchen can be used for entertaining—minus the unsavory dirty dishes or cooking smells.

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A kitchen-dining area in Malibu, Calif., was designed by architect Doug Burdge; the home is listed for $26 million.

"The hierarchy of the home is changing," says Mick De Giulio, a Chicago-based designer who is currently working on a 1,500-square-foot kitchen in a client's roughly 5,000-square-foot Detroit Lakes, Minn., weekend home. "People's lives today are more kitchen-centric than ever before."
According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average floor area of the kitchen has increased by about 50% from 1973 to 2007, when the average kitchen size topped out at 303 square feet, or about 12% of a home's overall space. Though it decreased slightly during the housing downturn, to 298 square feet, the amount of floor space dedicated to kitchens showed an uptick in the fourth quarter of 2011 amid the housing market's tepid recovery, according to the American Institute of Architects Home Design Trends Survey.

 

IN THE OPEN | This kitchen at 700 sq. feet by the New Home Company features hardwood floors and a large center island.

The trend is partly driven by a shift toward a more casual lifestyle, where people often want to prepare food with company either watching or helping them cook the meal. Joanne Hudson, a Philadelphia-based kitchen designer, says she also attributes the trend to more people cooking at home for health reasons—as well as wanting to show off the latest in increasingly pricey commercial-grade home cooking appliances.

As a result, builders and architects say space they once allotted to formal living rooms and dining rooms is now reserved for the kitchen-centric great room. Jeffrey Collé, a Hamptons-based designer/builder, says his latest custom homes include "country kitchens," open spaces that include large casual living rooms. One house he has on the market for $8.95 million in Wainscott, N.Y., has a nearly 1,400-square-foot kitchen great room with hardwood floors, a fireplace and informal family and dining area, as well as a pantry, powder room and outdoor cooking area.

** from the Blog of The Institute For Luxury Home Marketing

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