House Tour: A creative kitchen+dining space in a four-room Ghim Moh flat
By Melody Bay -
Open-plan kitchen or a closed one? For most of us, it’s one way
or the other. Calvin and Shuyi, however, dreamed of something much more unique,
resulting in a new configuration for their 93sqm Ghim Moh flat that includes a slanted
kitchen and dining space.
One of their requests in the design brief to Studio Super Safari was to have a kitchen that could be opened or closed as needed, and to introduce more natural lighting into the dining area.
To achieve this, Studio Super Safari proposed removing the existing kitchen walls, reconfiguring the layout to a slanted one so that their 2.2m dining table could sit, breakfast-bar style, between the dining and kitchen spaces. This allowed the couple to open up the space for meals, while also having the flexibility of closing off the sliding windows should they need to do heavy-duty cooking. During meal preparation, the dining table also serves as extra countertop space.
The sliding windows sit on the dining table itself with concealed top and bottom tracks, and can be slotted into the drywall itself, so they are fully out of the way when it’s time for loved ones to gather for a meal.
Mismatched chairs around the dining table add an eclectic, casual look. This is echoed in the tiles laid at the entrance, which demarcates the area for shoes. The mosaic pattern create a visual transition from the indoors to the outdoors, and together with the mismatched chairs, lend a relaxed, almost alfresco atmosphere that is rarely found in HDB flats.
The new configuration also means that the kitchen is bigger, and more light is able to pass through from the service yard into the dining space.
The living room is similarly outfitted in varying wood tones, but the neutral palette ties together the whole look.