Clever Kitchen Storage Trick

What to do if you want a small, minimalist kitchen—but, like any normal person, you have lots of stuff you need to stash away? In this farmhouse in Outgaarden, Belgian architects 51n4e devised a clever solution: they created a pristine and luxurious kitchen with clean lines, little visual clutter, and a secret storage room.

One wall of the kitchen is an ingenious sliding door made of white marble.

At first glance, it appears that one end of the room is a solid marble wall. But if you pull on one end of the wall, you realize that it's actually a sliding door made out of five millimeter-thick Carrara Bianca mounted on a 20-millimeter honeycomb structure. This allows light to shine through the wall from behind.

A gentle tug reveals a secret room behind the wall.

And when you move the wall to one side, you discover a raw and utilitarian storage space—the secret ingredient in many successful minimalist spaces.

When the wall is pulled aside, the original farmhouse structure is revealed—as well as the architects' skill in inserting the kitchen in the existing structure "like a precious jewel in its velvet box," as the architects put it.

For more examples of creative use of marble, see "Georgia Peach," which profiles a house renovated by Barbara Hill and "Creative Types," which spotlights the home of founding Dwell Creative Director Jeanette Abbink.