The Frankfurt Kitchen

The "Frankfurt Kitchen" was designed by Grete Schütte-Lihotsky, Vienna’s first female architect and a socialist, in 1926.

About 10,000 of the units were craned into position in Frankfurt social housing schemes. It is the fore-runner of the modern fitted kitchen.

I first heard of this kitchen and this architect in a Hugh Campbell lecture on History of Architecture. I read an article about it a journal [Krausse, Joachim "La Cucina di Francoforte" Domus no. 695 (June 1988) pp. 66-73, xxi-xxii].

It's an efficient, hygienic fitted kitchen which can be closed off from dining/living area.

Dimensions: 6.5m² - 1.9m x 3.4m

"At the time [when the Frankfurt Kitchen was designed] all the things which by today’s standards make a kitchen really clean and hygienic didn’t exist... the filth, the dirt, the vegetable cleaning, the peelings, the refuse, was all in the living room. That made it a lower form of living. And so we thought about this in Frankfurt and it seemed to us that a higher form of living would be created if... we also make a sliding door so that we can close off the room. Then we have combined all the advantages of the kitchen/living room with the advantage of a separate room for the dirt/kitchen refuse etc. And that was the point of departure for the Frankfurt Kitchen."

Context of the Design:

• Taylor’s theories: scientific organisation of work

"We must recognize that for every job there has to be a simplest and best way of doing it which is therefore the least tiring."

• models: laboratory and pharmacy

"A kitchen is actually nothing other than a laboratory and it would be much easier to work in if it was considered as such and fitted out in a similar fashion. It has to look something like a pharmacy where every phial and every little thing has its own place or its own drawer, with a precise label, everything as fas as possible the same size... The fitted cupboards should have glass doors, and all spices and other things such as tea, cocoa etc., which one keeps in boxes should be put into glass jars with a label just like in a pharmacy."

• Socialism post World War War: housing for all
• Tenements/public housing ridden with disease (cholera, tuberculosis), bad hygiene
• Greater respect for women’s rôle in society
• Kitchen = food: cooking, eating, washing, heating etc.
• Adolf Loos "Raumplan" (volumetric plan), Oskar Strnad, Josef Frank "Raum als Weg" (space as distance)
• Christine Frederick The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (german trans. by Irene Witte published in Berlin, 1922) - bible of household rationalization and kitchen reform
• attempts by manufacturers to design a new kind of kitchen furniture and household appliances (e.g. Otto Haarer)
• 1927: The Frankfurt Spring Trade Fair. This fair brought together architects, industry and women. The Frankfurt Housewives Association exhibited "The modern household". Also exhibited: The Mitropa dining car (2.9x1.9m), in which, during a 15-hour journey, meals and drinks for over 400 people are prepared.

Resulting features:

• Layout is fitted/fixed
• long, narrow shape (optical illusion of bigger space achieved by cupboards only on one side, only sometimes with wall cupboards above, upper part is white plasterboard, white extractor hood, light-coloured tiles, large window, black horizontal floor surfaces)
• Fold-out ironing board (1.5m long, no leg)

• Overhead presses
• Cupboards with sliding glass door

• Shelves with graded heights and depth
• Food cupboard ventilated through outside wall
• Sliding shelves
• Drawers for cutlery
• Pans arranged according to size on sloping slatted shelves with metal rack for frying pans at bottom
• Everything can be removed for cleaning
• Adjustable lamp

• Kitchen separated from dining area (controversial) by sliding door
• Labelled containers for food
• Stool
• Window above sink
• Rubbish chute in a drawer
• Cooking box
• Optimum working-distances in the kitchen
• distance from dining table to cooker & sink: not more than 2.75m
• Aesthetic: linked to hygiene and labour-saving = smooth surfaces, clear cubes; glass, aluminium, nickeled or enamelled metal, tiles or xylolite, linoleum, ultramarine woodwork (flies avoid blue)

I suppose I'll have to make a visit to Frankfurt!