Tom Dixon Greenwich Kitchens

We’ve been fortunate to work with Tom Dixon over the years, as he is a keen supporter of British manufacturing and heritage materials. In 2017 we secured a tender to produce and install bespoke splashbacks for 40 apartments at the Upper Riverside Complex on the Greenwich Peninsula.

Vitreous enamel was specified by Design Research Studio and SOMM Architects as the splashback material to be used on a new collection of Tom Dixon designed apartments in the Upper West Side building at Greenwich Peninsula.  Through the contractor Ergonom – who also supplied all the kitchens, wardrobes and flooring – we won the tender to supply these splashbacks.  There were two colour palettes finalised for the project, one using a white and indigo sgraffito finish and the other using the dark green enamel fade seen here on the show home.  The green enamel gloss sits perfectly against the copper extractor hood.

For the templating, we used laser measures and traditional metal rules to get the most accurate measurements.  There was only 1mm tolerance across a 5-metre span on some kitchens so we had to be precise, right down to the location of the plug sockets. Once measured up, the drawings were passed to our CAD team who then created the digital models for production.  Metal was cut and fabricated and checked for size against the drawings at every stage to make sure the tolerance was met. The panels then go through to the enamel team who apply the glass frit and a bit of magic dust before firing in the furnace at 850 degrees.  We tend to batch fire these so they stay consistent for each apartment.

Once fired and signed off against a control sample they head down to the dispatch team who back them with a cement fireboard and wrap them ready for delivery.  They are taken to the site via a pallet network and handed over to our install team.  Some of the panels were very large and took some effort to get them into position and through doorways protecting the panels and the properties all the while.   The backsplashes were bonded to the walls using a very high strength adhesive and thanks to the precise templates were actually very quick to fit. Each two-man team fitting 5 panels in under an hour.