Architectural Trends in Residential Kitchen Design

Fred Wilson, AIA

Fred Wilson, AIA
Founding Partner at Award Winning Chicago Architects, Morgante Wilson

Nov 12, 2013 - 5 min read

Architectural Trends in Residential Kitchen Design

Here on Chicago’s North Shore, our clients demand high quality, beautifully designed, supremely functional kitchens that work as well for family dinners and homework as they do for entertaining large groups and even accommodating the occasional caterer. Which is the reason all of us at Morgante-Wilson Architects get so excited when it comes time to work on a kitchen. It’s the one room our clients consistently tell us simply must be a showstopper – which means it’s also a room we know we’re going to have a lot of fun creating. Here are five of the biggest architectural trends in residential kitchen design we’re seeing today:

Forgo upper cabinets.

Skip the long banks of upper cabinets and you’ll free an enormous amount of space for windows. We like to run those windows all the way from the ceiling down to the countertop so you’ll actually look forward to doing the dishes

Include a walk-in pantry.

It’ll make up for all that lost storage space on the wall, and accommodate your oversize Costco purchases, too. Bonus: you can clean your kitchen in an instant just by shutting the door.

Incorporate metal.

As a residential architecture firm, we’ve been using a lot of metal lately, particularly on custom kitchen furniture crafted from steel, or fronted with aluminum. Hide a fridge, like we do, inside a piece of steel furniture and you won’t even know it’s there – which makes a kitchen feel a lot less kitchen-y.

See the light.

As anyone from Chicago will tell you, natural light is the cheeriest way to illuminate a kitchen. One increasingly popular way to get that light is to install a window behind a cabinet, and put a glass door on its front. That way you gain as much light as possible, without sacrificing any storage.

Shelve it.

Open shelves are hugely popular right now – partly because they’re visually appealing, and partly because they offer unparalleled grab-and-go ease. If you’re worried about keeping your kitchenware tidy, buy all white dishes so everything will look artfully arranged even if it’s randomly piled.

These are just a few of the trends moving to the forefront in kitchen design. As residential architects, they excite and inspire us. How about you? If you’re thinking about a new kitchen, give us a call. We’d love to discuss some ideas with you!

Fred Wilson, AIA

Fred Wilson, AIA

Founding Partner at Award Winning Chicago Architects, Morgante Wilson