Consider it an upgrade from the window above the sink: kitchens that open fully to the outdoors, letting in summer breezes while you cook and encouraging dinners that spill onto the lawn in good weather (and back inside when the evening gets chilly).
Sliding glass doors, set on a corner and with hidden drains, connect outdoor dining space to kitchen in A Modern Farmhouse Kitchen in SF designed by Malcolm Davis. In a tiny indoor/outdoor kitchen, sliding doors open onto the water.
A series of outdoor courtyards leads directly into the kitchen, no door included, in An Architect’s Indoor/Outdoor Dreamscape in Mallorca, Spain.
An architect-designed kitchen in a Sydney suburb features one long counter that stretches into a back patio.
We like this open-air kitchen with plenty of all-purpose shelving at March in San Francisco.
At An LA Ranch Rehab by Barbara Bestor and DISC Interiors, the entire living space, kitchen included, extends into an outdoor living and dining area.
In a townhouse in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, Elizabeth Roberts installed floor-to-ceiling doors to open the kitchen and dining area to the backyard.
In “the sparest version of what a weekend house can be,” the emphasis is on the outdoors: Even the industrial-style kitchen is situated in a screened porch.
Another rustic arrangement: A no-frills kitchen at the Fforest camp in Wales faces the outdoors and includes a selection of cast-iron pans.
Over on Gardenista: Oversize sliding doors connect wild gardens to a kept kitchen in the U.K. See On the Market: A Modern Walled Garden (Moat Included) for $2.6M in Devon.
An unused garage becomes an indoor/outdoor kitchen with galvanized steel workspaces.
Another way of extending the kitchen into the out-of-doors: using the same flooring in the kitchen and on the deck, as seen in Gardenista’s Architect Visit: A Puget Sound Cabin That Rests Lightly on the Land.
In an indoor/outdoor Hawaiian house, double doors open from kitchen to gravel courtyard.
In good weather, French doors open from the kitchen and dining room onto the backyard in An Antiquarian Farmhouse in Upstate New York, Transformed.
A full wall of steel-framed skyscraper windows provides a view onto a waterfall from the kitchen sink.
A kitchen in a new extension on a North London House is bordered on two sides by glass for easy access to the yard.
Photograph courtesy of Stephen Kavanagh Architects.