The First Functional, Modern Kitchen?
[Tejal Rao is a writer and translator from Northwest London, living in
Brooklyn.]
This was kind of a big deal: one day in 1912 a consulting editor at Ladies' Home Journal put down her sewing to listen to her husband and his friend talk about a new concept called efficiency. It gave her ideas! Soon after she wrote an essay about applying the ideas of industrial efficiency to the home to give middle-class women more time for the stuff they actually wanted to do. Lots of people read Christine Frederick's essay, including Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (Shoot Li-hot-skee), who took it to heart when she created the most famous archetype of the modern, built-in kitchen: the Frankfurt Kitchen.
Schütte-Lihotzky was born into a Viennese family. She was the first female student at what's now known as the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. After reading Frederick's essay, translated to German in 1922, Schütte-Lihotzky wrote her own article on the subject and sent it to the editor of Das Schlesische Heim, a Breslau architectural journal. He happened to be Ernst May, an influential architect and city planner who would remember her essay and ask her to join his team in Frankfurt five years later. He assigned her various projects including this one in 1926: design an impossibly cheap and tiny kitchen for the city's public housing and make it awesome.
Schütte-Lihotzky created the Frankfurt Kitchen, and the little prefabricated masterpiece was quickly installed in more than 10,000 apartments. It was full of urban design marvels. An adjustable stool for sitting and working or for reaching top shelves. Aluminum drawers that double as canisters for flour, rice, sugar, and lentils. A cutting board with a drawer for scraps. A sliding lamp for precise lighting. Though her original designs might have included a table for eating, May's space restraints made it impossible. This was not a kitchen for lounging with a book and a cup of coffee. It was a complete professional work space, separate from the rest of the home....
Read entire article at Tejal Rao at the Atlantic
Brooklyn.]
This was kind of a big deal: one day in 1912 a consulting editor at Ladies' Home Journal put down her sewing to listen to her husband and his friend talk about a new concept called efficiency. It gave her ideas! Soon after she wrote an essay about applying the ideas of industrial efficiency to the home to give middle-class women more time for the stuff they actually wanted to do. Lots of people read Christine Frederick's essay, including Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (Shoot Li-hot-skee), who took it to heart when she created the most famous archetype of the modern, built-in kitchen: the Frankfurt Kitchen.
Schütte-Lihotzky was born into a Viennese family. She was the first female student at what's now known as the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. After reading Frederick's essay, translated to German in 1922, Schütte-Lihotzky wrote her own article on the subject and sent it to the editor of Das Schlesische Heim, a Breslau architectural journal. He happened to be Ernst May, an influential architect and city planner who would remember her essay and ask her to join his team in Frankfurt five years later. He assigned her various projects including this one in 1926: design an impossibly cheap and tiny kitchen for the city's public housing and make it awesome.
Schütte-Lihotzky created the Frankfurt Kitchen, and the little prefabricated masterpiece was quickly installed in more than 10,000 apartments. It was full of urban design marvels. An adjustable stool for sitting and working or for reaching top shelves. Aluminum drawers that double as canisters for flour, rice, sugar, and lentils. A cutting board with a drawer for scraps. A sliding lamp for precise lighting. Though her original designs might have included a table for eating, May's space restraints made it impossible. This was not a kitchen for lounging with a book and a cup of coffee. It was a complete professional work space, separate from the rest of the home....