Kitchen of the Week: A Greek Architect's Ode to Minimalism - Remodelista
From the Remodelista editors’ favorites archive: The all-concrete kitchen in architect Theodore Zoumboulakis‘s retreat on the Greek isle of Hydra is a celebration of simplicity without being at all ascetic—and looks entirely of the moment (though it’s actually 13 years old). Photography by Studio Paterakis, courtesy of Zoumboulakis Architects, unless noted. Zoumboulakis designed the house for himself and his extended clan, and supplied the 10-square-meter (about 107-square-foot) kitchen with clean lines and homey curiosities—conveniently, he browsed the storerooms of his family’s longstanding business, Zoumboulakis Galleries of Athens, for all his propping needs. Photograph by Costas Picadas, courtesy of Zoumboulakis Architects. “I tried to make the entire kitchen in one finish: The poured concrete on the floor climbs and creates the worktops,” says Zoumboulakis, who also left the concrete exposed on the ceiling in the adjacent dining area. An antique marble fountain basin serves as the kitchen sink. “So after a lot of research, I decided to make all the faucets myself by buying and assembling industrial pieces of plumbing hardware.” The wooden storage shelf under the basin conceals its metal support brackets. Also from the family collections, a marble piece from an old well serves as the top of the pale blue concrete kitchen island. (The house’s water, Zoumboulakis tells us, comes from a cistern built under the kitchen. Photograph by Costas Picadas, courtesy of Zoumboulakis Architects. The kitchen opens to a utility room with floor-to-ceiling slatted cupboards and a refrigerator—mere feet from the stove but out of sight. Photograph by Costas Picadas, courtesy of Zoumboulakis Architects. The concrete counter has heft: It’s approximately nine centimeters (about 3.5 inches) thick. Go to our post Humble Heroes: The Kiosk Collection from Greece to find a similar one. The kitchen steps down to the dining area and living room. The dining table and chairs are early-19th-century French “monastery style,” and the sideboard is an old carpenter’s bench. The kitchen’s vintage sailboat painting is echoed by a Yiannis Kottis mural in the living room (prints of his work can be found at Zoumboulakis Galleries). Photograph by Costas Picadas, courtesy of Zoumboulakis Architects.