While traditional kitchen styles tend to emphasize material and color palettes, modernist designers are exploring the world of unconventional geometric design and creative framing. The kitchens in this post range from futurist styles based on sharp asymmetric polygons, all the way to otherwise classic compositions that break the mold by emphasizing innovative uses of proportion and shape – bold and subtle in turn. Many of these spaces sit on the high end of the luxury spectrum but others employ simple tricks that any handy DIY enthusiast can use. Which modern kitchen is your favorite? Let us know in the comment section!
Let’s start with something totally out of the ordinary. This kitchen builds off uniquely angled architecture with a trapezoidal island. The result is a surreal environment that turns spatial perception on its head.
While the rest of this kitchen enjoys the clean lines of an ordinary modernist style, the chaotic folded angles of the island pack a strong futurist punch. The unique kitchen bar stools are a perfect complement.
Gorgeous! L-shaped cabinet faces bring this kitchen design to the next level. Variations in texture and depth bring life to the otherwise simple surfaces.
Here’s another kitchen that carves character into ordinary features. The color palette is classic, but the distinctive shapes give the cabinetry a perfectly contemporary attitude.
Unconventional geometric designs are a fantastic way to create a focal point within minimalist compositions. This angled kitchen island and breakfast bar combination offers striking contrast to the clean lines that dominate the rest of the interior.
This smoothly tapered kitchen island plays with light and shadow for a fluid and seamless effect. It’s a functional sculpture sure to leave a lasting impression on guests.
Designs that employ carefully considered geometry can be subtle as well. This one uses wood and contrast to strike a sense of balance between the cabinetry and the staggered island in the foreground.
Symmetry and contrast play an important role in this kitchen. Even the refrigerator uses matching wood cladding for a seamless design.
How cool is this? Cabinetry yields to small windows that allow a look at the contents, an interesting alternative to the more typical open shelving approach employed with the spice racks in the back. But having an open approach like this means that every one of your accessories on display – including knives, wine glasses, mugs, cutting boards, teapots, cookie jars, etc. – need to be on point.
A curvaceous staircase and sharp iceberg shaped kitchen island are a match made in heaven. The contrast between modern white surfaces and traditional wood cabinetry adds even more depth to this unique kitchen design.
Retro and contemporary accents come together in perfect harmony. The unconventional geometry is fairly easy to overlook, consisting of creatively arranged upper cabinets and the careful use of repetition. The indoor herb planter rack lends a nice green touch.
Balance is such an underutilized aspect of kitchen design. This one uses wood elements straddled on either side of the tall cabinets, with horizontal and vertical lines reaching a beautiful equilibrium.
Faint patterns on the grey cabinet faces, nested rectangles, and a sharply trapezoidal range hood are just a few of the features that speak to a low-key appreciation of creative geometric composition.
Heavy emphasis on linear forms defines this kitchen, but the occasional chaotic accent keeps things lively. The distinctive lights above the island are from the AIM series by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.
Next up is a series of kitchens that use rather conventional geometric techniques. This one relies on linear forms but shakes things up with curved Eames dining chairs.
This kitchen uses the same curvaceous chair technique as the previous kitchen. This time, rounded kitchen pendant lights further the contrast between the organic and the linear.
Backsplash and cabinetry use vertical lines, while the kitchen island and breakfast table combination embrace the same horizontal grain as the low media table. The rounded chair and light combination shows up again.
Even though this kitchen and dining arrangement may seem universal, other shapes like cones and cylinders define the upper half of the visual plane. The Tolix-inspired stools seem to match the flair of the Aplomb pendants.
Fluid marble veining offers an impressive counterpoint to the rigid lines of the cabinetry and kitchen alcove. Material contrast is always an interesting way to break up an arrangement that feels too structured.
You can’t go wrong with clean lines. This minimalist kitchen plays the balance game very carefully. Following the floor tiles and the alignment of top and bottom cabinet, it’s easy to see this kitchen didn’t abuse symmetry but instead used alignment to create a sense of visual tension that works very well here.
And here’s another kitchen that seems very simple at first glance but makes good use of proportion and division to generate visual interest. Dark hues of the round kitchen table provide great contrast to the light kitchen scheme.
Straight lines, curved chairs, and rounded pendant lights will remain a winning combination. Contrasting accents always work wonders to break down boundaries in a kitchen theme. 
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- Designer: Piotr Matuszek & Gosia Czarny
While this kitchen is extra minimalistic, it takes advantage of the open plan to draw attention to the geometric wallpaper print to the right and the organic wood grain to the left. It’s a beautifully pristine buffer zone between the two defining styles within.
Like the skeletons of 3D models, wire form dining chairs embody a geometric attitude by their very nature. These offer a futurist counter to the contemporary and rustic materials behind them.
Vertical and horizontal rectangles make up the geometric fabric of the kitchen itself, but the pendant lights punctuate the theme with their dramatic curves. They’re from the Here Comes The Sun collection by Bertrand Balas.
The beautiful