Post Modern Kitchen. Mark Lewis as design director for Lewis & Horning 1983-7
Mr & Mrs Stewart a professional couple living in a modern town house in Notting Hill London were looking for something unique and interesting for their lower ground floor kitchen. At that time Michell Stewart was retail director of the V&A. Her husband was a senior expectative for a sugar cooperation. With two young children to look after the au pair managed the household. The kitchen and the adjacent dining room, and back garden had evolved to be the social hub for other local au pairs. It became a busy household of children, young and varied European women, with Mr & Mrs Stewart coming and going as their business commitments allowed. A relatively small area for the kitchen needed to accommodate a comprehensive cooking room as well as the usual seating for visitors having coffee or drinks while all in the kitchen chatting and gossiping. This determined the wall bar idea allowing a perch and wall table neatly segregating the social aspect of the room from the cooking and utility area. A washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, hob and oven, and a large ceramic Belfast sink with a waste disposal unit sat with in the slate slab and breeze block structures with adjacent wall units and tall fridge freezer larder and microwave housing. On the slate slab in the centre adjacent to the hob sat the chopping board which hovers off the stone surface by virtue of rubber feet affording a sustention system and ventilating the board all round. See wooden accessories.
Thirty years later Michell, now widowed living and working in Canterbury and the country house in Northamptonshire, had her son, daughter in law, grandchildren and large hound dog making the London house their home. Local interior architects had been commissioned to manage the house refurbishment to make adjustments to the glass facade and various aspects of the interior and rear garden. Inevitably the ambition for the ground floor was to have it as one large space incorporating the kitchen and dining area as one. Michell commissioned Mark to redesign this aspect of the project to determine the logistics and aesthetic to be implemented within the main refurbishment project. The original kitchen had done its job. Still possessed of its original integrity and good function it was clearly showing its age and was eventually consigned to the skip.