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Monday through Friday 9 - 5 Saturday by appointment
TWO HOODS AND TWO INCONVENIENT SUPPORT POSTS
Woodside Hood
A decade ago we were given the task of remodeling a kitchen for the San Francisco Symphony Designer Showcase. Three small rooms were united into one. Ken Burghardt’s concept was to create an island with a 60” Wolf restaurant range, an eating bar and the most offensive shaped hood imaginable – a coffin. The idea was to show people that anything could be done with the exterior of a hood. Once you were assured that the ventilation worked properly the exterior could be anything your could possibly imagine. Abbaka took care of the liner, controls and the motor, the rest was left to us.
The idea was to create a tableaux of four windows on the sides of the hood with an additional window against a wall facing the hood. A painting by 17th century Spanish artist Bartolome Murillo served as the inspiration for the period attire. A party was to be in progress “in the hood” structure and the people across the street, or in this case above the walk in pantry, weren’t invited. Two of the windows on the hood have revelers clearly visible, one has the family dog getting a little air and the last has a young woman gazing through the kitchen window into the yard. The people “across the street” are pouting since they weren’t invited. Muralist Oenone Youngblood did a masterful job of creating just the right tone for each of these windows and the end result was very well received. Very few people even noticed that this central design concept actually served as the ventilation for the range.
You might notice that an additional design element entered the kitchen. After ripping out the walls of the three rooms, finalizing the design, ordering all the cabinets and materials the engineer came back to us and said “you need a support post” right smack in the middle of the island adjacent to the range. After much deliberation we decided to create an oak tree identical to the many oaks that graced the grounds of the residence. Ron Sasina, currently a member of the Studio Mehler team, created the tree complete with a faux “burn mark” on the side of the tree facing the commercial range making a potential huge design error into one of the biggest conversation pieces on the tour. Many people loved it, many didn’t like it at all but everyone noticed this and the party going on in the hood behind it. People understood what we were trying to do and the kitchen was a huge success.
Back to Studio Mehler January 2010 e-newsletter
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