Great kitchens are not merely for picking ingredients and cooking up great dishes. They should be alive, throbbing with experiences, places to match our daily moods and make things personal - places to inspire.

Aster Cucine has taken this as its new theme for research, representing a cross between architectural rationalism and personal mood. The new kitchen designs, presented at this year’s Milan Design Week, include a whole spectrum of materials, each one showing off both character and style. The different moods – traditional, modern, transitional, factory and luxury glam – have all been designed as modular pieces to be put together to exactly fit personal tastes, in keeping with individual ideas and dreams; coming up with something that has never been seen before. The smallest of details is accounted for, covering technology, technique, functional perfection, ergonomics and movement.

Factory Mood offers a taste of the metropolitan high life. Within this specific model, the industrial mood draws on original designs combining high tech and all-natural materials, as if they were raw or time-worn, in order to create functional yet highly contemporary designs. Factory is characterised by the knotty grain of the reclaimed wood, the rough raw directness of the iron and Corten and the burnished reflection of the brass finishes, all reflecting elements of restoration, remembering the hand-made and re-purposing.

This is what makes Factory iconic and contemporary. Factory also offers diversity with 16 different types of door fronts, all with or without handles, pieces in smooth metal or embellished frames using a wide range of different glass types, including the distinctive wire mesh glass, as well as steel, iron, blackboard finish and a sophisticated brush-finished paint job. Factory is like an open workshop for cooking up ideas, with a design that is truly alive and personal.

Aster Cucine is available exclusively from Brands International, Triq tal-Balal, San Gwann. www.brands.com.mt