Design Workshop: Ingenious Wall Cabinets Offer Bountiful Benefits

How many empty cabinets do you have in your home? If you’re like me, you don’t have a square inch to spare. A well-designed bank of cabinetry organizes and conceals the everyday clutter of life, helps us live more efficiently and is an aesthetically pleasing element integral to the architecture of a home.

Let’s look at three distinctly different approaches to integrating cabinetry into a home.

1. The Thick Wall

Walls are one of the fundamental components of an architect’s design palette, and quite often architects like to think of cabinetry as a really thick wall. Typical cabinet depths range from 12 to 24 inches, so compared with a standard wall at roughly 6 inches deep, cabinets are indeed thick walls.

This depth offers certain special opportunities: It allows us to fill the space within; it allows us to pass through the cabinets and actually experience their depth; and it offers a visibly prominent zone for us to shift perceptions in rooms.

Here that zone begins on the right as one enters, with open shelving above and closed cabinetry below. It quickly transitions to a more solid zone as one enters the living area beyond. The architects have used this to create two spatial effects. First, in the more horizontally compressed entry and stair area, the cabinetry is more open, which enlarges the perceived width of the space. Second, in the more open living area, it becomes more solid and a backdrop for the activity of the room.


The lightness at the entry gives way to the solid anchoring wall of cabinetry at the living space. The thick wall connects the spaces of the home and explains clearly the priorities of each space. Plus, the cabinetry wall supports the design objective to defer to the monumental tree and view outside.


The thick wall here is only understood as being thick because the zone has been cut away and function has been inserted. Architects create service zones in floor plans to establish order. Here the thick wall zone does many things: It serves as seating in the dining area, as a storage area between dining and living spaces and as a media center in the living room.

Ordering functional zones in small spaces is logical. Grouping the functions together on one wall unifies disparate components into a sensible whole.


Perhaps best of all, a thick wall offers opportunities for the rapid transformation of spaces from nondescript to highly specific. Indications that this wall acts as more than just a simple storage area are there — the steel walkway, the hoist, the ladder — but it’s unclear as to exactly the function that’s being disguised.


Seen here fully revealed, the wall gives way to two Murphy beds and an entertainment unit. Despite the regularity on the front face, each functional priority has been designed carefully — integrated headboards, drawers, flip-back doors (that don’t conflict with raising the beds) and closets.

Hosting opposing functions — bedroom and gathering space — is entirely possible with thick-wall cabinetry.


Grouping storage together and overlaying an ordered grid of door openings, as in this example, achieves an understated simplicity. This not only looks well thought out, but it’s also a budget-conscious solution to storage. By selecting a single cabinet module and putting it to work everywhere, you simplify not only the design and appearance but the ordering, installation and hardware selection. It goes without saying just how much we architects and designers love ordered systems.


2. Cabinetry as Architecture

Wonderfully inventive, this project employs the cabinetry kit of parts for an entire range of architectural elements. The complete integration of cabinetry forces one to consider just where the cabinetry ends and the architecture begins.

The seamless nature of a project like this makes it the most expensive to incorporate, because it often involves all of the infrastructure we so easily conceal in roughly framed walls — things like structural columns and plumbing, electrical and mechanical systems. The upside is that the finished product feels engaged with the architecture in ways that other solutions can’t.

Storage in the risers, integral seating, workspaces, closets — the amount of custom accommodation for function is remarkable here given the small floor area.


One can see from this vantage point just how cleverly the architect has concealed an enviable amount of storage beneath this stair. The stair stringers, the sloping wood framing supporting the stair, are set back from the face of the cabinet doors. This allows the cabinet doors to follow the rectangular sawtoothed profile of the treads and risers and not the angular underside of the stringer. When the doors are closed, they form an understated patchwork on the face of the wall and complement the architecture of the room.


This wall of cabinetry makes an implied connection between the main level and the mezzanine level because the same material was used on both levels. Even though the walkway separates the two visually, the implied connection remains strong.

These tricks can work in a variety of circumstances where one wants to suggest visual connections but the spaces are physically disconnected.


This bank of cabinetry acts as a warm-toned paneled wall defining a corridor. The wall’s panels conceal door openings and access to other rooms. It’s a commanding organizing element and allows for a hidden passageway — behind the secret door — to become a reality.


3. The Divider

Cabinetry that functions as a freestanding wall object that divides space preserves both openness and visual separation. This cabinetry configuration serves the functional requirements of the kitchen, but because the cabinets stop short of the ceiling, the eye can continue to surfaces farther in the background. This establishes a feeling of connectedness and openness, while the lower wood wall element fosters a feeling of enclosure and spatial definition.


This wall of cabinetry acts as the central organizing element in this renovated loft. It organizes the public and private areas of the plan, and it also has a massive amount of function in its subtly curving form.


When open, the various-size doors reveal many functions. Note the desk areas with folding doors. The design was inspired by a tribal dancing dress, whose irregular geometric patterns are abstracted in the complex series of door openings on the wall surface. Walls of cabinetry that transform in this manner are infinitely changeable and, as seen here, can influence the formality of the space in dramatic ways.


Objects don’t have to consume the entire floor-to-ceiling volume of space to be powerful organizing devices. The cherry cabinet on the left wall is a contrasting singular design move against the white wall. Acting as a floating counter and display area, it also conceals a large amount of storage. The broad, linear horizontal proportion hovering above the floor is a commanding gesture. Its object-like nature is reinforced by the clean surfaces, free of ornament and hardware. The architects have used touch latches to maintain a face free of distractions — a great technique when using the cabinetry as divider object concept.


We often think of furniture as freestanding and object-like. Built-in cabinetry, too, can mimic the lighter properties of furniture. In this way it can be richly functional and efficient in a small space, not overwhelming it but supplementing the functional priorities.

The bed platform in this loft combines the functions of sleeping and storage, and defines a raised private space within the larger public space. It manages to do this as an open furniture-like piece that floats in the room.

In all of these examples, the cabinetry feels neither overwrought nor tacked on — rather, integral to the architecture. And the resulting spaces are all the better for it.

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