New Zealand's Top Kitchen Designer Now Australia's Hottest Property

New Zealand kitchen designer Mal Corboy is the talk of Australia, having been booked for a lecture tour that will take him to nine Australian cities and three New Zealand venues to speak to around 2,000 of his peers – on kitchens and success.

Australian-born Mal Corboy moved to New Zealand 22 years ago and began building a reputation for great and innovative kitchens. He has been winning awards across Australasia ever since, but it was last year’s win, becoming Australian Kitchen Designer of the Year (the only person to win Kitchen Designer of the year in both New Zealand and Australia) that has elevated him to legendary status and international recognition.

Mal has just returned from Milan where he visited the leading trade fairs and was humbled by the welcome. “I was surprised to find that I was so well known by all sorts of designers and suppliers,” he said. “I was even photographed by paparazzi when I was out shopping for one of the design newspapers there – without my knowing!” he said.

Back in New Zealand Mal is getting a few new designs to clients before he departs for his lecture tour, among them further enquiries from the USA where his first kitchen in the house of a Hollywood millionaire has been generating interest.

“We forget that wealthy Americans are often still very conservative,” says Mal. They often still opt for very traditional, enclosed and fussy kitchen designs – unlike the New Zealand style of a clean open plan kitchen-living room for entertaining. Our style of kitchen is considered very ground-breaking there,” he said.

Mal departs on 20th May for Sydney for a gala dinner in his honour and then travels through nine cities across Australia and three more in New Zealand.