Design director of Chiselwood, Martin Holliday has been chosen as one of seven judges for the American KDC Awards, reportedly the biggest kitchen design award in the world.

Sub-Zero and Wolf have been running the awards for over 25 years with 23 contests and celebrated 14,000 designs, promoting 800 design professionals.

Martin Holliday originally trained as an engineer on gas turbines, however, in his early 20s, followed his passion to design and manufacture furniture.

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Using the knowledge and pension he gained in engineering, he found he could design furniture that looked beautiful and provided practical solutions for everyday life.

This led to the creation of individual pieces for the kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom industries.

Speaking about the influence of engineering on his kbb design work, Holliday said: “The level of accuracy you train to is quite demanding compared to general joinery.

“When it comes to me working on the drawing board the detail we tend to work to is probably quite extreme.”

And he said good kitchen design is based upon working with the architecture of the house, adding: “Often people try and impose something on a house that probably shouldn’t be there. It’s such a fine line.”

Commenting on what he hoped to hoped to see as a judge, Holliday said he wanted to see something that would “jump off the page and give you that ‘wow’ factor and also see if there’s any interesting, technical ways of getting over problems. It’s not just [about] the pretty fronts on the furniture.”

Speaking about judging the Sub-Zero Wolf design awards, he commented the entries focused on the kitchen as a ‘Great Room’, forming part of the main room of the house, and said this ethos is becoming more commonplace in UK design.

Holliday exclaimed entries to the American kitchen design awards don’t just look at furniture but also consider structural changes to the architecture, redesigning ceiling, changing windows and moving walls.

Holliday commented “This is something we try and do. We look at the room as a whole; the architecture of the house. It’s not just about the furniture.”

However, he conceded: “Most American houses are timber houses and they are a lot easier to alter than UK houses.”

But Holliday pointed out the UK leads the way in the bespoke kitchen market, adding “we’ve always been a country that’s design-led.”

He founded bespoke furniture company Chiselwood with his wife Mel, in Lincolnshire, in 1989, which now employs a team of designers and cabinetmakers.

And Holliday has won may UK accolades over his 32 years in design, culminating with a win as the only UK and European award from Sub-Zero and Wolf Kitchen Design Contest in 2017.

His most recent work at Chiselwood has been designing and building six eco-houses.