Kitchen designProduct Spotlghts
A brand new hoodie – something unexpected from BEST by Broan
By Florence von Pelet
There are some familiar items of hardware, components of just about every home which have been developed and refined to the point where you no longer really expect anything new. And then you see something very fresh, quite unexpected. That’s the only way to describe some of the new hoods from BEST by Broan. According to Brian Wellnitz, marketing manager from BEST, the Vertigo Double, shown above, was inspired by the shape of the air itself. He says “The designer mirrored the circular motion of the air in the hood’s polished silver curves, and we thought it was a brilliant way to pair the function of the range hood with a unique design.” Apparently, when BEST carried out market research many members of the public identified the hood as a chandelier. So it works as eye candy, but how about as a piece of kitchen equipment? BEST tell us that Vertigo Double is an air recirculation range hood, using special filtration to reduce smoke and odors. Of course, there will be someone out there who doesn’t want a sculpturally interesting hood, they want an invisible one. If that’s you, click continue.
When your kitchen has a view like this you really don’t want to break it up with a big stainless steel hood. And maybe you don’t have a view like this but… well you get the idea. This piece of cleverness is the Cirrus. In our Kitchen designer days we’ve had to rethink the location of a hob simply because we didn’t want a hood above it. Now the problem is solved. While many of the hoods from BEST stand out because they, well, stand out, Cirrus scores because it almost disappears.
Lipstick is as in your face as Cirrus is discrete. Modenus opinion is split on this one. Some of us love it and some of us are reminded more of an inverted fire extinguisher than anything we would want hanging above our hobs. But that’s what we love about interior design in general and this range from BEST specifically, something for everyone but not what they expected. You can see the full range on the BEST website.