For 20 years now, Italy-based German interior designer and furniture maker Katrin Arens has been finding fresh uses for discarded wood. She’s still on the vanguard of the reclaimed movement: “I love reusing wood to make things that will last,” she tells us. “I aim for designs that are simple and clean without being cold.” Today we’re spotlighting a compact kitchen that Arens designed for a young restaurateur couple in Bergamo, in the Italian lakes region, where Arens herself has a second home and workshop. The landscape and architecture of Northern Italy, she says, serves as both her inspiration and her source for castoff materials.
Photography courtesy of Katrin Arens.

Above: Set in an apartment in a newly remodeled early 19th-century house in the center of Bergamo, the kitchen is built largely from salvaged scaffolding wood with a dramatic back wall of iron sheeting that wraps around the range hood. The dishwasher is to the right of the sink and there’s a freestanding fridge to the left, out of the photo frame.
Above: Arens made use of her clients’ Ikea sink and faucet from their former home: “Why not reuse something that’s nice"” (Note the top drawer, built around the plumbing.) The iron utensil rail was fabricated in Arens’s studio.

Above: Arens uses all-wood drawers and cabinets with basic carved openings in most of her designs. As for the various finishes, she explains, “We produce...