Frankfurter Küche

The Frankfurter Küche, or Frankfurt Kitchen, is a type of kitchen allowing high productivity by the reduction of the lengths of operational routes. It was established by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, a Viennese architect in the 1920's. Schütte-Lihotzky worked on a paper investigating in how architecture and interior design can reduce a woman's work in the household. In that time she worked in the Frankfurt building department for standardisation of building components. One of her aims was to put women out of the slavery of the household. Focussing on the kitchen as workstation, she measured the shortest ways to complete housework in order to reduce the worker's energy and time. The construction and aim of the Frankfurter Küche is orientated on Taylorism of which Schütte-Lihotzky heard in 1922. At about the same time, the American Christine Frederick published her book 'The New Housekeeping Efficiency Studies in Home Management' which was influential on Schütte-Lihotzky who saw that a woman's occupation would become more accepted in order to add up budget to the husband's income. The model of the Frankfurter Kitchen was to simplify the household in order to give women more time for their families, their children and themselves. The architecture of the Frankfurter Küche was characterised by its long, rather narrow shape. That allows enough room for storage and short ways from one side to the other. Furthermore, a wide passage with sliding doors from kitchen to dining room allowed the woman in the Frankfurter Küche to communicate with her family and supervise her children whilst working. It is differentiated between four types of the Frankfurter Küche: the kitchen-living-room, the kitchenette, the working-kitchen and the dining-kitchen. The structural foundation consists of an extractor fan (to keep the mist out), a food box (before refrigerators were affordable), pedestals (to make cleaning beneath the single elements easier), a broom and rubbish closet and a breast wall (to make it easier to open the window). Furthermore, the room between the upper cupboards and the ceiling was closed in order to have no dust on the surfaces. More (innovative) details of the Frankfurter Küche are the sink, cooking-box, workbench and a ditch for garbage, drawers for dry groceries, an ironing board integrated in the wall and artificial, movable illumination. The pragmatism and functionality of the Frankfurter Küche evoked international echoes and excitement. Its basic structure was influential on the interior design of following kitchens.

Works Cited:

Schütte-Lihotzky, Margarete; Peter Noever. Die Frankfurter Küche: Die Frankfurter Küche aus der Sammlung des MAK - Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Wien. Berlin: Ernst, 1992.

Schütte-Lihotzky, Margarete. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Soziale Architektur. Zeitzeugin eines Jahrhunderts. Wien: Böhlau, 1996.