Frankfurt Kitchen: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

The Frankfurt kitchen was less a room than an argument: that housework is labor, and labor can be measured, standardized and shortened. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky built it from American efficiency literature, Viennese settlement politics and Ernst May's social-housing machine at New Frankfurt. This mix traces the ergonomics manuals behind it, the Weimar estates around it, and the feminist reckoning that followed.

The Kynda mix for Frankfurt Kitchen

• Key Influence · Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home by Christine Frederick (1919). Frederick's time-and-motion studies of American housework, translated into German in the 1920s as part of the Rationalisierung debate, gave Schütte-Lihotzky her method: chart every step of cooking, then shorten it. Her famous work-path diagrams for the Frankfurt kitchen — counting paces between stove, sink and store — follow Frederick's logic exactly, including continuous counters at standing height and the removal of the dining table from the workroom.
• Influencia Obscura · Der neue Haushalt: Ein Wegweiser zur wirtschaftlichen Hausführung by Erna Meyer (1926). Meyer's bestselling household manual appeared the same year as the kitchen and was the German channel through which rationalised housekeeping reached Weimar reformers; she advised on kitchen planning for Stuttgart's Weissenhofsiedlung in 1927. Her prescriptions — uninterrupted work surfaces, the dry-and-put-away sequence, measured stores — run parallel to Schütte-Lihotzky's drawings, and she is the figure the design's debt usually gets credited to last.
• Local Roots · Typenmöbel (standardised Frankfurt furniture) by Ferdinand Kramer (1925). Kramer was Schütte-Lihotzky's colleague in Ernst May's Frankfurt building department, designing cheap serial furniture, door handles and the Kramer stove for the same estates her kitchens were installed in. New Frankfurt worked as a total system: standard type-plans, standard fittings, standard costs. His furniture is the kitchen's household sibling, produced under identical constraints of budget and square metre.
• Beyond the Medium · Motion Study: A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman by Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1911). The Gilbreths filmed and mapped bricklayers' and factory hands' movements to eliminate wasted motion, inventing the cyclegraph path diagram. Schütte-Lihotzky's published plan of looping lines tracing a cook's steps across a conventional kitchen versus her own is that engineering notation applied to a woman's body at home — a factory-floor measurement technique carried straight into the apartment.
• Peer · Haus am Horn kitchen by Benita Otte (1923). Three years before Frankfurt, Otte designed the Bauhaus experimental house's kitchen in Weimar with continuous worktops, wall-hung cabinets and matching storage jars — the first German attempt at a fully fitted, built-in kitchen as a single designed unit. It is the Frankfurt kitchen's nearest rival for primacy and shows how widely the problem was being posed in the same years.
• Key Collaborator · Siedlung Römerstadt, Frankfurt by Ernst May (1928). May recruited Schütte-Lihotzky to Frankfurt in 1926 to run the standardisation of dwelling interiors, and Römerstadt is the showpiece estate where her kitchens were fitted into terraced flats above the Nidda valley. The partnership is total: his type-plans assume her kitchen's dimensions, and her kitchen only makes economic sense at his scale of municipal production.
• Legacy · Semiotics of the Kitchen by Martha Rosler (1975). Rosler's video parody of a cooking demonstration, naming and brandishing kitchen implements with mounting violence, is the sharpest feminist reply to the rationalised kitchen tradition the Frankfurt unit founded. Its target is precisely the efficient, equipped, isolating workroom: a one-woman laboratory that measured housework brilliantly while confirming whose job it remained.

What influenced Frankfurt Kitchen

• Frederick Winslow Taylor. The Frankfurt kitchen’s design drew on Taylor’s research. (also via The Principles of Scientific Management) “Based on scientific research by U.S. management expert Frederick Winslow Taylor and her own research, Lihotzky used a railroad dining car kitchen as her model to design a "housewife's laboratory" using a minimum of space but offering a m…” (Wikipedia)
• Christine Frederick’s scientific-management approach to housework by Christine Frederick. Jervis traces the kitchen’s scientific-management approach to Frederick’s work. “For their kitchens, Schütte-Lihotzky applied scientific-management principles to domestic life, an approach pioneered by American writer Christine Frederick” (ICON Magazine)
• The Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management (Frederick Winslow Taylor) — titan for Frankfurt kitchen “Her mid-20th century designs incorporated electrical appliances while continuing to rely on methods for efficiency advanced by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Christine Frederick.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Die neue Wohnung: Die Frau als Schöpferin by Bruno Taut (1924). Die neue Wohnung: Die Frau als Schöpferin (Bruno Taut) — ghost for Frankfurt kitchen “== Motivation and influences == Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, alongside Bruno Taut and Ernst May, was among the leading housing development architects during the Weimar Republic.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The American Woman's Home by Catharine Beecher (1869). The American Woman's Home (Catharine Beecher) — titan for Frankfurt kitchen (gutenberg.org)
• Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home by Christine Frederick (1919). Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home (Christine Frederick) — titan for Frankfurt kitchen “Her mid-20th century designs incorporated electrical appliances while continuing to rely on methods for efficiency advanced by Frederick Winslow Taylor and Christine Frederick.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• My Life and Work by Henry Ford (1922). My Life and Work (Henry Ford) — culture for Frankfurt kitchen (openlibrary.org)
• Vers une architecture by Le Corbusier (1923). Vers une architecture (Le Corbusier) — culture for Frankfurt kitchen (openlibrary.org)
• Mitropa dining-car kitchen by Mitropa. Schütte-Lihotzky presents the compact dining-car kitchen as an instructive model in her account of labour-saving kitchens.
• American kitchen fixtures. Schütte-Lihotzky names American cabinets and tables as exemplary models of household efficiency.
• Motion Study: A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman by Frank Bunker Gilbreth (1911). Motion Study: A Method for Increasing the Efficiency of the Workman (Frank Bunker Gilbreth) — culture for Frankfurt kitchen
• Der neue Haushalt: Ein Wegweiser zur wirtschaftlichen Hausführung by Erna Meyer (1926). Der neue Haushalt: Ein Wegweiser zur wirtschaftlichen Hausführung (Erna Meyer) — ghost for Frankfurt kitchen

Peers and kindred spirits

• New Frankfurt. The kitchen was designed for the New Frankfurt housing project. “The Frankfurt Kitchen was developed as part of the public housing program “The New Frankfurt”. Between 1925 and 1932, 22 housing estates with over 12,000 apartments and town houses were built in Frankfurt/Main.” (Museum Angewandte Kunst)
• Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. The article identifies Schütte-Lihotzky as the kitchen’s designer. “The fixtures of the “Frankfurt Kitchen” are designed in precise accordance with these time- and labor-saving principles. Three different fully equipped Frankfurt Kitchens by the City Building Department (design: Grete Lihotzky) are on ex…” (Neue Frauenkleidung und Frauenkultur, reproduced by German History Intersections)
• Siedlung Römerstadt, Frankfurt by Ernst May (1928). Siedlung Römerstadt, Frankfurt (Ernst May) — collaborator for Frankfurt kitchen “The Frankfurt kitchen (German: Frankfurter Küche) is a compact, standardized, built‑in kitchen designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky for New Frankfurt, Ernst May's social housing project.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Chaise longue basculante (B306) by Charlotte Perriand (1928). Chaise longue basculante (B306) (Charlotte Perriand) — peer for Frankfurt kitchen
• Großmarkthalle Frankfurt by Martin Elsaesser (1928). Großmarkthalle Frankfurt (Martin Elsaesser) — geography for Frankfurt kitchen
• Hellerhof Siedlung, Frankfurt by Mart Stam (1931). Hellerhof Siedlung, Frankfurt (Mart Stam) — geography for Frankfurt kitchen
• Schulbau: school designs for New Frankfurt by Wilhelm Schütte (1930). Schulbau: school designs for New Frankfurt (Wilhelm Schütte) — collaborator for Frankfurt kitchen
• Typenmöbel (standardised Frankfurt furniture) by Ferdinand Kramer (1925). Typenmöbel (standardised Frankfurt furniture) (Ferdinand Kramer) — geography for Frankfurt kitchen
• Tea infuser and strainer (MT 49) by Marianne Brandt (1924). Tea infuser and strainer (MT 49) (Marianne Brandt) — peer for Frankfurt kitchen
• Haus am Horn kitchen by Benita Otte (1923). Haus am Horn kitchen (Benita Otte) — peer for Frankfurt kitchen
• Siedlung Heuberg, Vienna by Adolf Loos (1923). Siedlung Heuberg, Vienna (Adolf Loos) — collaborator for Frankfurt kitchen

Who Frankfurt Kitchen influenced

• Tempe à Pailla. The Frankfurt Kitchen influenced Gray's kitchen design. “Gray's multi-level kitchen was influenced by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky 's Frankfurt Kitchen .” (Wikipedia)
• The Frankfurt Kitchen. Rotifer’s song is described as a tribute to Schütte-Lihotzky’s work. “The song "The Frankfurt Kitchen" by Rotifer is another tribute to her work.” (Wikipedia)
• Semiotics of the Kitchen by Martha Rosler (1975). Semiotics of the Kitchen (Martha Rosler) — legacy for Frankfurt kitchen (wikidata.org)
• Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen by Juliet Kinchin (2010). Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen (Juliet Kinchin) — legacy for Frankfurt kitchen