Built In Storage

For Living, Dining and Entertaining

Most of us think of built-in storage as a modern innovation, yet it's been part of domestic architecture for centuries. The Shakers designed wonderful floor-to-ceiling units containing shelves, drawers and cupboards custom-sized to suit their contents. They made the best use of the space by filling whole walls, which gave ample storage space while excluding dust traps. Today we call this type of cabinetry-“built-ins”. In the modern high end home, built-ins are very popular space-saving architectural elements which vary in design from a classic paneled library with rows of bookcases to the ultra contemporary thick look of a TV cabinet or multi-media cabinet.

Built-ins are an effective style which applies today and particularly when thinking of storage for living rooms, dining rooms and media units or home entertainment centers. These are the rooms in which we relax and want to display our most beautiful and treasured personal effects, such as family photographs, decorative vases, and sculptures, but we also want to conceal some of our less beautiful accessories, such as video tapes, CDs, and DVDs.

The design of built-in storage probably has the greatest influence on the personality of the room, because it will dictate what we hide and what we put on display. Purist Modern architects would aim to hide everything behind flush closet doors, letting the building itself become a piece of artwork. And although that makes for quick and easy housekeeping, many abaico clients prefer to have somewhere to keep those treasured items that express their own personalities as well as provide quick and easy access to equipment and other stored items without going to a closet.

Some built-in furniture comprises both closet and display, making the best of both worlds, while other pieces are distinctly designed for showing things off. Some of these display oriented pieces can be seen in the portfolio section of the site. Combining the utility of shelving within custom cabinetry can be utilized in many rooms or even as a solution to a fireplace surround for real integration of the fireplace and the cabinetry into the new highly personalized space. The contemporary styling and “one-off” (one of a kind) design of these pieces is very much the norm at this time in major US cities and resort areas and a specialty of abaico.

Click here to view information on Shelf Defection and Load Distribution.