Storage that swings - built-in storage/display cabinets that can be swung into different positions

Built-ins that budge may be the answer when you want a room to be as versatile as possible. The four custom-designed storage and display cabinets that are featured here can swing into alternate positions depending on how the room is being used. Each cabinet pivots around a fixed axis, much as a door does.

Glass case

rolls aside

This 9-foot-long, 8-foot-high plywood, lacquer, and glass display cabinet pivots around a post at one end on four 4-inch hinges. Four 4-inch (fixed-position) rubber casters allow the heavy case to roll smoothly, without marking the terrazzo floor. The display case usually functions as a divider between living and dining rooms. When owners Glenn and Gabriella Isaacson entertain, they move it to one side, near the room's main entrance, combining the living and dining areas into one large space. Design: Studios Architecture, San Francisco. Frabrication: Nick Yiangou, San Francisco.

Two wings swing in

opposite directions

An all-maple wall between a bedroom and a study is made up of a stationary center section and two movable side wings. The section on the left swings into the study, while the one on the right swings into the bedroom, creating two hallways. Design: John Eggleston, of Edward Weinstein Associates, Architects, Seattle, and cabinetmaker Brian Van Horn.

Buffet rools open to

become a bar

This curved, marble-topped, 6-foot-long counter is the movable part of a sculptural divider between kitchen and living room. The cabinet has places for glassware and liquor, and it pivots into the living room, where it becomes a bar for entertaining. The cantilevered cabinet box is made of ebonized ash plywood; legs consist of stainless steel tubing, which rests on 3-inch rubber wheels. The rotating bar-buffet is hinged at the rear. Design: Wagner and Webb Architects, Los Angeles, in collaboration with steel fabricator Greg Abbott and cabinetmaker Peter Muny.

Center-of-kitchen island

orbits around itself

This kitchen work island is anchored in the center of the room, yet can be moved to where it's handiest (to the cooktop for cooking, to the sink for cleanup). It's part of an AIA-Sunset Western Home Award-winning remodel featured last month. In addition to providing more workspace for various activities in the kitchen, the shifting island can create different traffic patterns there. The butcher block-topped unit has a swing-out knife rack on one side, open shelves at the rounded end, and closed storage along the other side. The heavy rubber fixed caster doesn't mar the vintage black linoleum floor. Design: Fung Blatt Architecture, Los Angeles, for Lon Bender and Lorna Anderson.