Danish brand Reform has teamed up with David Thulstrup, Note Design and Muller Van Severen for its latest set of hacked IKEA kitchens, which feature mix-and-match coloured doors and a monochromatic metal cabinet.

Reform, which specialises in the customisation of IKEA's Metod kitchen, launched three new models at New York's International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) yesterday.

Comprising Plate by Studio David Thulstrup, Frame by Note Design Studio and Match by Muller Van Severen, the cabinet hacks are designed to suit the "ongoing wear and tear that comes with contemporary living".

Fien Muller and Hannes Van Severen, who run Belgian design studio Muller Van Severen, similarly chose a durable material for their Match set. However, they used the wax-like high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a thermoplastic polymore more commonly used for chopping boards.

"We have always felt a love for polyethylene, with its powerful colours, but actually its real nature is a soft and warm appearance," Muller and Van Severn told Dezeen. "It invites you to touch."

"It is not a dead plastic with a cold and smooth surface, rather it has the appearance of candle wax or a skin," they added.

The fronts come in six colours – white, blue, peach, green, red and brown. They can be mixed and matched to suit different tastes and home aesthetics, with a marble countertop. "Different colour combinations makes totally different characters," said the designers. "It can be very young or rather chic or classic."

David Thulstrup, who runs his eponymous firm in Copenhagen, drew on his own experiences for his design.

"When I was asked by Reform to make a new design, I was in the middle of designing my own kitchen," Thulstrup told Dezeen. "Therefore, I was very focused on how to give a kitchen a sense of home, but at the same time being current and extremely simple."

Called Plate, his set features three versions in a mix of materials, from matte, dark-brown to glossy white fronts, and a mixture of granites as well. A standout piece, however, is a cabinet with brushed-aluminium doors and a stainless steel top in a matching hue.

"The answer for me was a monolithic metal kitchen with a hand-crafted look: aluminium for the fronts and steel for the counter-top," Thulstrup said. "The result is a product that looks sturdy but soft, solid but pleasant, contemporary but not related to time and trends."

"I wanted the metal to be visible, to be the main character in its honesty," he continued. "Metal is long-lasting and strong, which is extremely important for a kitchen, but it also becomes more beautiful over the years, like a soft hand-brushed aluminium that tells a story over the passing of time."

Stockholm's Note Design Studio aimed to break away from the minimal all-white design often associated with Scandinavia. They painted wooden doors to match Corian tops to create monochrome blue and off-white designs, and paired dark-brown oak fronts with a speckled, Corian counter for another.

"A lot of Scandinavian minimalism is basically a white room," studio founders Daniel Hecksher and Kristoffer Fagerström told Dezeen. "The thing is that life is not white - life is not black and white," they added. "When you exit the door, you see millions of colours."

The studio, which previously turned IKEA kitchens into living room cabinets for Reform, designed the cabinetry to be ideal for its team of 16 architects and designers.

"Our ambition was to create a kitchen that we could actually use ourselves," Hecksher and Fagerström said. "So I'm not sure it came from a source of inspiration - it was more about a need to create something that we – all 16 of us – could get behind and use ourselves."

They chose solid wood fronts, rather than veneers, to ensure that they are hardwearing and long lasting.

"If you have this in the kitchen and you slam it with trays and pots and pans and cutlery, the solid wood will actually protect the other parts of the board, said the designers. "That means that the kitchen will last longer."

"Traditionally-designed products like panel doors are traditional for a reason: they work," they added. "It's nice to get these little design nuggets from history."

David Thulstrup, Note Design Studio and Muller Van Severen are the latest architects and designers to hack IKEA products for Reform. The brand has previously worked with some of the biggest names in Danish architecture such as Henning Larsen and Norm, and Cecile Manz.

Last year, Christina Meyer Bengtsson also teamed up with Reform to create a set of gold-hued kitchen cabinets for designer Stine Goya.

Plate, Frame and Match are currently on display at ICFF at the Jacob K Javits Convention Center, 34th Street and 11th Avenue. The showcase runs 19-22 May 2019 during the citywide NYCxDesign, which concludes the same day. Other launches at this year's event include a wooden chandelier designed by New York studio RUX.