A Blueprint for Efficient Housework The Frankfurt Kitchen 1926 - 2020
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Foreward Rationalising Housework: The Frankfurt Kitchen examines the Frankfurt Kitchen, a revolutionary piece of modernist architecture that changed not only how were think about the kitchen and the home but how we think about women and their place in society. By considering the cultural context in which it came into being we can in 2020 understand the signifigance of its designs and how much it has influenced kitchen design today.
Woman demonstrating the benefits of a smaller more efficient kitchen, 1934
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01 Background
Germany Post WW1 Women’s Rights The first factor that influenced the creation of the Frankurt kitchen was the struggle for women’s rights. From 1890 onwards there were massive leaps forward for gender equality and in 1918 women were acknowledged as equal to men and granted the right to vote. However after this legal victory Germany ironically fell into a period of social conservativism. The assertions of women as independent actors in society sparked a period of ‘re-domestication’. This was a state policy at the time that sought to place women firmly back into the ‘women’s sphere’ i.e. the home. One method used to keep women at home was of women was the professionalisation of the household. This policy proposed that modern technology applied to the home would rise domestic chores to a professional level giving housewives careers equal to that of their husbands, without them leaving the home and taking their place.
The New Frankfurt There was also a massive shortage of housing in many cities, particularily Frankfurt. Unemplyment rates were high and standard of living was low. The state funded a large scale social housing porogramme called “The New Frankfurt”. It would be one of the most ambituous housing programmes of the Weimar Republic – only Berlin built more social housing than Frankfurt. Between l926 and l932 some 60,000 people, 10% of the poulation in 15,000 units were rehoused.
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The female MPs of the Majority Social Democrats in the Weimar National Assembly on June 1, 1919
“Between 1926 and 1932 some 60,000 people, 10% of the population, in 15,000 units were rehoused� 7
Rรถmerstadt
Corner shop building in Rรถmerstadt estate, 1927
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Ernst May
Urban Planning
Ernst May was the architecht in charge of the “New Frankfurt” scheme. His ideals incorporated the best in technical advances: the rationalized household, electricity, central heating and cable radio. He recruited a team of architectural pioneers to work with him to revolutionise the living standards of the working class and were responsible for the building of over 10,000 new homes being built around the city. The idea behing his housing schemes was the use of a scientific examination of how the every day person lived their life and how the design of their houses can be used to best suit their living habits. This can most clearly be seen in the design of the Römerstadt Estate.
City planning as a beaurocratic activity between 1913 and 1924 barely exisited and as a result the city sprawled in an unordered and innefficent manner. In contrast, May considered and organised the entire etsate meticulously. The layout was not only for utility but also gave form to the area. The local streets were established sparingly in a gentle curvelinear pattern with minimal width. Creating the feeling of spcaiousness but also community within the estate and allowed for easy movement throughout.
The Primary Achievement The settlement of Römerstadt was the primary achievement of the ‘New Frankfurt’ initiative. Among all its projects, Römerstadt is recognized as the most complete realization of the programme’s ideal. It incorporated the best in technical advances as well as the exemplification of ‘New Life’ reforms: a model school, and an intricate landscape plan of allotment gardens and parks. The settlement reflected both new attitudes towards leisure and modernity, and romantic ideals of the consolation of nature. The Römerstadt estate was above all a triumph of rational design and consideration of the needs of the people who would live there.
The Frankfurt Kitchen The aim was not merely to create affordable living space with improved social and hygienic conditions. May’s goal was the formation of a new and more modern society with exemplary living conditions. The experimental buildings constructed for the New Frankfurt programme were built with a level of consideration for the user that had never been done before. The design of the kitchens that were installed in the esates were unlike any other previously created. The kitchen, dubbed “The Frankfurt Kitchen” included all the normal appliances and fixtures and was standardised and mass produced. With a compact spatial arrangement, the stove, cold storage, sink, cabinates and counter tops were modelled off railroad dining cars and fitted into an impressive 3.44 by 1.87 m2. The pioneer behind these designs was the architect Grete Lihotzky.
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Höhenblick – Strasse
Fuchshohl – Strasse
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Kurhessen – Strasse
1. Shop 2. Underground 3. Laundry Building 4. Storage Shed 5. Sports Hall 6. Housing Block 7. Housing Block 8. Nursery 9. Communal Garden 10. School
Map of section of the RĂśmerstadt estate, 1927
Grete Lihotzky “The residential house is the materialized organization of our living habits, therefore design must reflect these habits� 12
Past Work Born in Vienna in 1897, she became one of the first women to study architecture at what is now the University of Applied Arts Vienna. As a student, Lihotzky won several prizes and was taken under the wing of her professor Oskar Strnad, who hired her to work on building projects as soon as she graduated. Lihotzky flung herself into developing new forms of housing, including the bedsitting room, which was designed for Karoline Neubacher, wife of the Viennese politician Hermann Neubacher. It’s design combines the modernist values of economy, resilience, and simplicity with formal elegance. Most of the furniture fulfills several functions, like the bed that doubles as a sofa and storage unit, and a wall panel that drops down to form a desk. Chic, compact, and ingenious, the designs showed her passion for economy and ergonomics which would be the key to her future career.
Her Beliefs Lihotzky prioritised user friendliness and efficiency above all else in her designs. When it came to the Frankfurt kitchen this carried through. The main idea behind her design of the kitchen was to rationalise domestic chores, reduce the amount of ‘unproductive labour’ and in the process improve efficiency of time given over to house chores. However in doing so this would have another effect for women. It would free up time and energy for the housewife that would allow them to work outside of the home and earn a wage thus being independent of their husbands.
Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky, photographed in 1926
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02 Materials
The Frankfurt Kitchen Modernist Principles The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the forerunner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realised for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost. Lihotzky did detailed time-motion studies to determine how long each processing step in the kitchen took, re-designed and optimised workflows, and planned her kitchen design such that it should optimally support these workflows. Improving the ergonomics of the kitchen and rationalising the kitchen work was important to her. The problem of rationalising the housewife’s work is equally important to all classes of the society. Both the middle-class women, and also the women of the worker class, who often have to work in other jobs, are overworked to the point that their stress is bound to have serious consequences for public health at large.
Emphasis on Materials Lihotzky embraced many materials that would not have been used in kitchens at the time like glass, metal and plastic. She carfeully chose the materials for every object and had strong reasons for each one. The wooden door and drawer fronts were painted blue because researchers had found that flies avoided blue surfaces. Lihotzky used oak wood for flour containers, because it repelled mealworms, and beech for table tops because beech is resistant to staining, acids, and knifemarks. 16
‘The Frankfurt Kitchen’ installed in Romserstadt, 1927
Country Kitchen
Reconfiguration
Kitchens up until that time were described as ‘country kitchens’. These kitchens had no consideration for the layout or placement of kitchen facilities in relation to the best use of the space or best layout for the user. They were comprised of a mix of pieces of furniture like stand-alone dressers that left awkward spaces that were not easy to clean. There was lots of space between the most used kitchen areas like the worksurfaces, sink and oven which led to the housewife walking longer distances which unnecessarily wasted time and energy.
Using the information gathered in her research Lihotzky completely reconfigured the floorplan of the kitchen. The Frankfurt kitchen layout was carefully considered and designed solely with the user in mind. The kitchen dimensions were scientifically worked out – 1.90m wide and 3.40m long – which was determined to be there most efficient layout. The narrow design made it easy to reach items on the opposite side and the smaller size left less surface area to be cleaned minimizing the amount of work to be done. Unlike working class kitchens before this that had been part of a communal living and often sleeping area too, the Frankfurt kitchen was separate from the eating and living area allowing the housewife to work uninterrupted and therefore more efficiently. The kitchen was connected to the dining area via a sliding door that was space efficient and easily operated.
Scientific Approach Due to May and Lihotzky’s shared belief in the importance of fucntional design and designing for the user, the approach to the designs of the New Frankfurt were based on a pool of scientific data collected by the team. Lihotzky studied working class women working in their kitchens and mapped out the recurring patterns of use. Using this she determined that the sink the oven and the workspace were the most commonly used areas and must be positioned so as to have the most efficient use of time and energy. She Identified areas that caused time to be wasted - cleaning awkward uneven sufaces, looking for ingredients in presses, walking from one end of the kitchen to another carrying and fetching and cleaning various equipment. She then condenced all of this information down and came up with solutions to all of the areas identified. The biggest change to her designs was the kitchen floor plan.
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Hinge Door
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3. Cook Box 4. Ironing Board 5. Food Cupboard 6. Swivel Stool 7. Work Surface
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8. Garbage Drawer
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10. Sink
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11. Aluminium Storuage Bins 12. Cupboard for Pots and Pans 13. Broom Closet
9 Floorplan of the original NotatiponFrankfurt Kitchen, 1927
Drawers The most unique feature of the Frankfurt kitchen is the ergonomic drawers. There were eighteen labelled aluminium drawers that were designed for keeping staples like flour and sugar. The ingredients were accessible because of the ergonomic handle which allowed the user to slide the drawer out and scoop out the required amount in one swift movement. They were aluminium and so easy to clean and the labels were easily read.
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Lihotzky’s unique ergonomic ‘Storage Drawers’
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Swivel Chair Another unique feature of the Frankfurt Kitchen was the work stool. This stool fit perfectly underneath the work area infront of the window where the user would be able to sit and do tasks like prepare food and measure ingredients. It was adjustable to allow the user the to choose most comfortable height for them and took up minimal space. It was lighweight and so very portable.
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‘Swivel Stool’ from the original Frankfurt Kitchen
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Presses Glass fronted cupboards allowed the user to see exactly what was in each press allowing for the most efficient possible locating of objects. the other cabinet fronts were of coloured enamel. They were the full length from top to floor so dust couldn’t collect underneath them. The colour of the original cabinet fronts was blue because Lihotzky believed that this colour was repellent to flies.
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Presses from the original Frankfurt Kitchen, Designed by Grete Lihotzky,1927
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“The Frankfurt Kitchen realised for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost�
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03 Effects
Desired Effects Lihotzky’s beliefs Lihotzky’s aim was to improve working-class lives, by making unpaid housework easier. This was the driving force behind all of her designs; as she later put it, “I was convinced that the economic independence and self-realization of women would be a common good, and that therefore the further rationalization of household labor was an imperative.” Her commitment to this goal was unwavering and the medium she used to achieve it was rationality. The most impressive aspect of her process is the amount of information gathering and research that informed the designs. However, unfortunately, when the kitchen was put into use there was a huge gap between her expectations and how working class people actually interacted with it.
Commercial Success Although The Frankfurt kitchen did not fulfil the exact needs it was designed to, or emancipate women as Lihotzky hoped, it was a major commercial success. It was modular allowing I too be manufactured to exact proportions and fitted easily and quickly. It was also cheap to manufacture due to savvy use of building materials and assembly. About 10,000 Frankfurt kitchens were installed in the late 1920s.
Women working in linen factory, Frankfurt 1930
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Housewives Reaction The designs of the kitchen were not popular with the housewives of Frankfurt in practice. They embody the modernist design sensibility of ‘one size fits all’ – the rigidity of the number and size of drawers as well as the fact that they came prelabelled, determining what they should contain was too inflexible and rigid. So while they were revolutionary in their design and form, the design did not aid the housewives of Frankfurt because they did not want to conform to the system it imposed on them.
Housewife and her children outside home in Romerstadt 1931
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“Worst of all, the kitchen was so small that only one person could be in it at a time, making the user feel isolated from the rest of the house� 28
Failure to Consider Real Environment
Testing in Actual Environement
In her zeal to make the kitchen efficient, Lihotzky completely forgot to consider real-life context and the social implications of the design. Despite all of the well laid plans, many first time users were apparently baffled by the layout. They found the inflexibility of the design frustrating, and they proved to be disappointingly undisciplined when it came to using the carefully labelled food bins. When people actually went in to use the Frankfurt kitchen they found them very cold. Furthermore, the carefully designed food bins (intended for flour, rice, etc.) were easily reached by small children, making spillage very common; labels were pre-printed on the bins, meaning that owners inevitably ended up with all the wrong labels on things; and worst of all, the kitchen was so small that only one person could be in it at a time, making the kitchen user feel socially isolated from the rest of the household. Lihotzky’s ideals were born out of the Tayorism movement – which was all about making factory floor and repetitive labour activities more efficient. In that sort of workplace setting, it is possible to prescribe user behaviour – do this and you get paid. Where Lihotzky went wrong was that she assumed you could prescribe user behaviour in the home.
The Frankfurt Kitchen is an example of the dangers of designers testing their own designs. This is called dogfooding - when an organisation uses its own product therefore this creating a bias in testing results. It’s interesting to consider that actual-environment studies would have uncovered problems with the design very quickly, while dogfooding would most likely have failed to uncover the problems. This is because Lihotzky and her colleagues would have been so heavily engrossed in the ideals of the design, they would have used it in a highly disciplined and rigorous way – unlike their target users (german working class families who had just emerged from the ravages of WW1). This is a lesson worth remembering – dogfooding is today a very popular method in big corporations yet it can be disastrous if there’s a big difference between the test users and the real users.
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Hinge Door
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Window
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1. Gas Stove 2. Cook Box 3. Ironing Board
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5. Swivel Stool 6. Draining Board 7. Sink 8. Aluminium Drawers 9. Broom Closet 10. Dining Table 11. Sofa 12. Coffee Table
9 Floorplan of kitchen and living area of house in Rรถmerstadt, 1927
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04 Contemporary
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Lihotzky’s Lasting Influence Kitchens as Important Rooms Although there are many significant differences between our attitudes towards kitchen design and Lihotzky’s in 1927, many aspects of her designs are present in almost every kitchen today. The importance that was transferred to kitchens by the scientific approach Lihotzky used to research her designs, she elevated kitchens to a much higher status than it had before. The perception as an important hub of activity in the house has continued on today. This is evident in the advertisements of home furnishing companies like IKEA. What is also evident is how Lihotzky’s ideals about efficiency and rationality are no longer priorities. We are told that a nice looking home is the key to fulfilment and so IKEA sells its products based on inspiration rather than function. This approach can clearly be seen in their advertising which aims to “rediscover the joy of the kitchen’ rather than to entice us with fittings that will deliver functionality and efficiency.
Materials One aspect of Lihotzky’s designs that has become an integral part of contemporary kitchens is her use of materials. Most kitchens have glass-fronted presses and enamel fronted doors are both neat, aesthetically pleasing and easy to clean. Work surfaces are made of scratch proof materials and floors are often tiled or covered in linoleum, both of which do not trap dirt and are easily cleaned.
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“Rediscover the Joy of the Kitchen”, IKEA, 2018
“IKEA is not a store it’s a concept, and this concept is one of inspiration. This is an inspiration that is identified as residing in specific things”
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Style Over Substance Contemporary Kitchens Today kitchens are generally much more of a fashion statement than a place for work to be carried out. this rejection of Lihotzky’s biggest contribution to kitchen design tells us a lot about contemporary attitudes towards kitchen design. In 2020 the average person has much more disposable income than in 1926 and this extra financial security has translated in the forsaking of efficiency and time saving for trendiness and appearances. It is no longer imperative that housework be as efficiently as is physically possible because we have much more technology to help us and housework is much more evenly distributed throughout the household.
Kitchen as Genderless Space Our attitudes towards kitchens have changed greatly in the last 100 years. Most notably, we do not consider the kitchen to be a gendered space. The basis of Lihotzky’s designs was making housework as streamlines as possible so women would be able to get it done faster as the kitchen was seen as a woman’s rightful place. Today, this concept is outdated and not held by the majority of the population. today kitchens are seen as central hubs of the home. They are not solely places for labour to be carried out but have become much more. Kitchens are now spaces where people gather instead of being kept out. They are places to pause and take ones time not just a place to carry out necessary work.
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“Make More Than Just Food” IKEA, 2016
Size and layout in 2020, small kitchens are not prized for efficiency but seen as problems. Kitchens are considered areas to socialise which has seen the rise in poularity of amalgamated kitchen–living areas. These open plan kicthens incorporate not only a place to cook and eat but also a sitting room area with couches specifically for relaxing. This mixing of areas is one of the biggest breaks from Lihotzky’s designs and it is very interesting to note this is in some ways a step backwards.
Example of a contemporary kitchen-living area containting kitchen, dining and sitting areas
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3 Sofa 4 Coffee Table 5 Utilty Door 6 Utility Sink
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7 Washing Machine 8 Cupboard 9 Kitchen Table 10 Oven + Hob
Floorplan of a contemporary open-plan kitchen, living and dining area, 2020