Marble folds over both ends of the island and runs to the floor, mitred at the corner so the vein carries round without a visible joint. That waterfall detail is the most expensive centimetre of stone in the kitchen and the first thing anyone touches. It anchors an open cooking area inside a 3000 sq ft plan in Gulshan 2, where the kitchen is permanently in view from the dining table and had to be finished like a room rather than a service space.
There are two kitchens in this flat, and that is the fact everything else follows from. The open one you can see handles breakfast, serving and light cooking. A second, utility kitchen sits behind a frosted glass folding door and takes the heavy cooking, the double sink and the mess that comes with cooking Bengali food daily.
Grey Handleless Fronts and the Waterfall Island
The cabinet run is a flat grey lacquer with no hardware showing on any front. Doors open on a routed finger pull along the top edge of the drawer bank and a push catch on the tall units. Handles are the first component that dates a kitchen visually, and in a kitchen this exposed to a dining room the absence of them keeps the run reading as panelling rather than as equipment.
The island carries the marble top over a grey carcass, with seating on the dining side and drawers on the cook side. A ring pendant hangs above it at 900mm off the stone, high enough to clear a sightline across the island and low enough to keep the light on the working surface instead of spreading it across the ceiling.
The Induction Hob and Black Chimney Hood
An induction hob sits in the marble on the open side under a black glass chimney hood, with a marble breakfast counter running behind it. Induction rather than gas was deliberate on this side. It puts out far less ambient heat, produces no combustion residue on nearby cabinet fronts, and can sit within a metre of where people are eating without turning that corner uncomfortable in May.
Gas stays in the utility kitchen where the real cooking happens. Anyone who fries fish or tempers spice knows what that does to an open plan room, and no hood on the market fully contains it. Splitting the fuel between the two kitchens is what lets the open one stay clean enough to be looked at.
The Frosted Glass Folding Door and the Double Sink
The folding door is frosted glass in a slim frame, stacking back against the wall rather than swinging. Frosted rather than clear so the utility side reads as light instead of as clutter, and folding rather than sliding so the whole opening clears when nobody is cooking and the two kitchens can work as one long space.
Behind it the utility kitchen runs a double sink under a window with roller blinds and a full length of working counter beside it. That window is what makes the room usable, giving daylight over the sink and cross ventilation that pulls cooking air out rather than back through the door. Utility kitchens without an external window end up as store rooms, whatever the drawing says they are.
The Built In Oven and Backlit Counter Section
A built in oven is housed at chest height in the grey run, set so the door opens at a level where a hot tray comes out flat rather than being lifted from a crouch. Beside it a stretch of counter is backlit from behind the splashback, with a frosted glass panel door closing the corridor end of the run.
Lighting the counter from behind rather than only from the underside of the wall units gives a softer working light with no glare bouncing off the stone. It also stops the counter becoming a dark band at night, which matters in a kitchen visible from a dining table. The same lighting profile runs as a cove above the wardrobe in the luxury master bedroom design in Gulshan 2, bought in one length and cut for both rooms.
The Pantry Counter and Blush Velvet Armchair
At the corridor edge, a pantry counter carries backlit glass cabinets above it and a blush velvet armchair set beside it. Putting a chair at the pantry sounds purely decorative and is not. It is where somebody sits with tea while another person cooks, and in a plan where the kitchen end is the room people gather in, that chair turns out to be one of the most used seats in the flat. The corridor beyond it runs on to the modern family living room design in Gulshan 2.
Who Built the Carcasses and How
All the joinery was built by a fabricator we have used across our interior design service in Gulshan for years, from moisture resistant board rather than standard MDF, because a Dhaka kitchen carcass sits in humidity all monsoon and swells at the base first. Edges are banded on all four sides, including the ones nobody sees, and every hinge and runner is soft close from one brand so replacements are a single phone call in five years.
Carcasses were built to a site survey taken after the floor tiling was finished, not from the architect’s drawing, since a 10mm error in floor level over the length of an island run shows up as a visible gap under a waterfall edge. A written specification of that kind is the document worth comparing before you compare quotes, and it is what our modular kitchen design service is built around. The 3,000 sq ft Gulshan 2 apartment project shows both kitchens in position against the dining room they serve.
The same workshop cut the white panelled fronts used in the luxury girls bedroom design in Gulshan 2, which is why the panel and shear lines match across two very different rooms in the same flat.
Thinking of splitting your cooking between an open kitchen and a utility one? Call us at 01633-033033 or book a free consultation today.
