When she and her husband embarked on building their modern home in Greenville’s North Main area, Silvia Fischbach called on Forest Kitchen Design to give it the European feel they wanted. “It was important to me that when I opened the doors of this house, I felt like I was in Germany,” the Düsseldorf native says.
Joel Linn, Forest Kitchen Design’s principal designer, successfully brought the couple’s vision to life, creating a functional yet beautiful kitchen. “Working with the Fischbachs pushed me to the next level in kitchen design for European clients,” he says.
“When completed, I felt that I deeply understood the German aesthetic, and its ‘function as beauty’ philosophy,” he adds. “It is easy to take traditionally shaped kitchens and replace the doors with slab fronts and call it European or modern, but that is far from reality in designing this kind of kitchen.”
Whether cooking for her family or gathering friends around the large center island for a dinner party, Fischbach enjoys having a kitchen filled with clever storage and convenient touches. “It’s easy to work in,” she says. “I love to cook, but I need to be organized to do it.”
- A wall connecting the foyer and kitchen features two seamlessly incorporated pantries inspired by apothekerschrank, tall, narrow cabinets often seen in German pharmacies. With pull-out shelves and drawers, these cabinets offer easy access to ingredients and kitchen equipment.
- Instead of installing lower cabinets with doors around the L-shaped perimeter and on one side of the island, the couple opted for drawers to store spices, cookware, dinnerware, linens, and cleaning supplies (in the large drawer beneath the stainless steel, single-basin sink). Linn carefully considered the drawers’ alignment so “the lines chop everything in a very organized-looking and beautiful way without sacrificing function,” he says.
- Expansive windows line one wall, offering a view of the garden. “We love the big windows because they provide so much light,” Fischbach says.
- The Fischbachs eschewed upper cabinets on another wall and instead installed a wooden ledge that provides a contrast to the kitchen’s modern elements. It serves as a display area for plants, decorative items, and an abstract painting that adds visual interest and acts as a great conversation starter. The adjacent QLOCKTWO, a word clock from Germany, also sparks interest, as it displays the time on a word matrix.
- A wine refrigerator has two separate temperature zones for storing red and white wines. A suite of Miele appliances, which includes a gas four-burner-and-grill range, an oven, and a steam oven, lets Fischbach easily prepare her favorite German recipes. “I didn’t want a microwave,” she says, adding that the steam oven can reheat food if needed.
- The fully integrated refrigerator and freezer, along with adjacent cabinetry for cookbooks, baking supplies, and large appliances, blend seamlessly into the wall. “It’s a very German design to have everything hidden, so it looks like you have nothing in your kitchen. But when you open it up, you have all this storage,” Fischbach says.
