{"id":2879,"date":"2019-04-02T16:10:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T14:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"\/blog\/?p=2879"},"modified":"2019-04-16T12:20:41","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T10:20:41","slug":"the-frankfurt-kitchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/blog\/2019\/04\/02\/the-frankfurt-kitchen\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u00b4s that for? The Frankfurt Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time-saving and efficient \u2013 the Frankfurt Kitchen<\/h1>\n

Stefanie M\u00fcller | 2 April 2019<\/span><\/p>\n

In the early days of the Weimar Republic<\/a> there was an enormous shortage of housing. To safeguard the social peace the right to a \u201chealthy dwelling\u201d was anchored in the constitution. It was above all the municipalities that began around 1924 to implement extensive housing programmes, which included among other things the optimisation of home furnishings. In this DHM blog Stefanie M\u00fcller writes about a classic of the times: the \u201cFrankfurt kitchen\u201d designed by Margarete Sch\u00fctte-Lihotzky.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That little bit of housework\u2026 still quite enough to do is what many people are thinking now. Fortunately, practical and increasingly clever household appliances alleviate the chores and save time. Many of these household aids that we now take for granted first came about in the 1920s, and among them is the modern built-in kitchen, whose origin dates back to the Weimar Republic. Even then rationalisation of the workload and time-saving methods were already the driving force behind many technical innovations. But not only that: the Weimar Republic also offered the opportunity for a cultural modernisation of society. However, what does that have to do with household and kitchen?<\/p>\n

New time \u2013 New solutions<\/h3>\n

The young republic was faced with serious challenges, one of which was the huge housing shortage, especially in the cities. In order to tackle the disastrous hygienic problems and social conditions, the state sprang into action and began financing major building projects. This was the case in Frankfurt am Main, where Ernst May (1886-1970) was put in charge of the urban planning office in 1925. With the support of the municipal authorities he wanted to turn people\u2019s living space into an affordable and yet high quality site for the good of the masses. Like many modern architects, May counted on standardisation, new materials and new construction methods, as well as on industrial serial production. Not only the process of construction, but also the design of the flats and especially the kitchens were to become more rational. To achieve this, May brought the young Viennese architect Margarete Sch\u00fctte-Lihotzky (1897-2000) into his team. Inspired by the kitchens in railway dining cars, she studied the exact movement sequences that occur in housekeeping. Every step of the work was timed with a stopwatch to determine the most efficient design of the kitchen. In 1926 she presented the results of her studies \u2013 the so-called Frankfurt kitchen.<\/p>\n

\"Margarete

Margarete Sch\u00fctte-Lihotzky (1897-2000) \u00a9 ullstein bild \u2013 Imagno<\/p><\/div>\n

Innovation in the smallest space<\/h3>\n

What Sch\u00fctte-Lihotzky came up with was a ca. six square metre kitchen that was no longer thought of as a kitchen\/living space, but merely as a workroom. Furnishings for a room of this size did not exist, so the architect developed a modular system for which the furnishings could be produced cost-effectively in large numbers. The design with its numerous practical extras was ground-breaking and even seems modern today.<\/p>\n