Custom Kitchen · Rosedale, TorontoFurniture-Style Island · Panelled Appliances
Green Forest draws from the character of traditional English kitchens, where cabinetry feels less like a fitted system and more like a collection of individual pieces made for the room.
Designed by AWDS for a heritage home in Rosedale, the kitchen brings together deep green painted cabinetry, marble, warm brass details and a walnut furniture-style island against the home’s existing architectural character. Rather than trying to make the old house feel new, the cabinetry was designed to feel as though it belonged there.
At the centre of the room, the walnut island takes its cues from a traditional worktable. Turned walnut legs, an apron-style frame and integrated drawers give it the presence of a freestanding piece of furniture, while the marble top connects it back to the surrounding kitchen.
Traditional English kitchens have long drawn from furniture making, treating cupboards, dressers and storage pieces as individual elements within the room. Green Forest carries that idea into the way one of the kitchen’s largest appliances was handled.
The refrigerator is completely concealed within full-height furniture-style cabinetry. Rather than simply applying matching panels to its doors, AWDS designed the surrounding millwork to give the entire piece the proportions and presence of an armoire, including detailed upper panels that complete the composition.
The cabinetry is meant to have presence. The refrigerator is what disappears.
Green Forest wasn’t designed in isolation from its surroundings.
The exposed brick, original architectural detailing, checkerboard floor and traditional proportions already gave the house a strong identity. The cabinetry responds to that character rather than competing with it.
Deep green perimeter cabinetry provides one layer of the composition. The walnut island introduces the warmth and character of a freestanding furniture piece. Marble and brass connect the two, while the furniture-style refrigerator enclosure gives a necessary appliance the character of traditional millwork.
The result isn’t a reproduction of an old English kitchen. It’s AWDS’s interpretation of those principles for a Toronto home today: cabinetry designed as furniture, made specifically for the room, and built to feel like it could have always belonged there.
