Fantasy Island

In glowing, swooping white, architect Zaha Hadid’s vision of tomorrow’s kitchen is a spaceship-like console, pulsing with electronic equipment and sleek, almost organic forms.

At this year’s Milan Salone, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid’s released her first foray into kitchen design for DuPont Corian, to much acclaim. The futuristic Z-Island is divided into two separate workspaces – Fire and Water – separating the activities of cooking and consuming, and preparation and clean-up. Two wall units, one a storage and appliance unit made of rotating squares, and the other a lighting and sound panel, are designed to complement and integrate with the islands.

“Our starting point for this kitchen was a series of formal studies on the conceptual terms of ‘fluidity’ and ‘seamlessness’,” says the Iraqi-born, London-based Hadid. These designs… were triggered by the observation of natural phenomena such as the melting of ice or the flow of glaciers and their moraines.”

The main bench, Fire, is a long, seamless horizontal cooktop, heating plate (so your dinner never gets cold) and eating surface that sweeps up to a vertical digital screen and Ipod unit. The Water bench is a compact hexagonal unit, with a built-in sink, dishwasher, drying rack, shelving and food prep area. “By applying advanced 3D software to our experiments with Corian, we were able to explore complex surfaces and their productivity for domestic environments,” says Hadid. “A major benefit of this design language is that you can create something that not only appears continuous, but also blends in seamlessly with the ergonomic needs of a kitchen island.”

Hadid’s characteristic hard angles have been softened in the Z-Island kitchen, which offered a striking counterpoint to the cool, squared-off stainless steel kitchens showed at Boffi and Bulthaup. She says although she doesn’t cook much herself, she tried to create a kitchen that would work perfectly in her London flat, that was neither too compact and isolated, nor overwhelmingly sprawling.

The Z-Island for DuPont Corian will be manufactured and sold by the Italian kitchen company Ernestomeda. LS