The Kitchen: Life World, Usage, Perspectives 9783764377236, 9783764372811

Table of contents :
Foreword
The Kitchen: Terra Incognita. An Introduction
We Should Be Happy That Kitchens Are Still Getting Built At All
On the Kitchen and Vulgar Odors. The Path to a New Domestic Architecture Between the Mid-Nineteenth Century and the Second World War
Refrigerators, Kitchen Islands, and Other Cult Objects. Kitchens from the Second World War to Today
The Kitchen Today. And a Little Bit Yesterday. And Tomorrow, Too, Of Course. On Kitchen Styles and Lifestyles
Between Progress and Idling: The Standard Kitchen. Notes on the Development of Swiss Kitchen Norms
From Restrictive Norms to Greater Freedom. Kitchen Planning Today
Ghostly Silence. The Unemployed Kitchen
To Table! To Table?
Select Bibliography
Illustration Credits, Acknowledgments

Citation preview

Klaus Spechtenhauser (ed.)

The Kitchen Life World, Usage, Perspectives

Birkhäuser – Publishers for Architecture Basel · Boston · Berlin

Translation into English: Bill Martin with Laura Bruce Design: Klaus Spechtenhauser A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data bases. For any kind of use permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. This book is also available in the original German language edition (ISBN 3-7643-7280-X/987-3-7643-7280-4). © 2006 Birkhäuser – Publishers for Architecture, P.O. Box 133, CH-4010 Basel, Switzerland. www.birkhauser.ch Part of Springer Science+Business Media Publishing Group. Printed on acid-free paper produced of chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ Printed in Germany ISBN-10: 3-7643-7281-8 ISBN-13: 978-3-7643-7281-1 987654321

Contents

Klaus Spechtenhauser

7

Foreword

Johanna Rolshoven

9

The Kitchen: Terra Incognita An Introduction

Alice Vollenweider

17

We Should Be Happy That Kitchens Are Still Getting Built At All

Michelle Corrodi

21

On the Kitchen and Vulgar Odors The Path to a New Domestic Architecture Between the Mid-Nineteenth Century and the Second World War

Klaus Spechtenhauser

45

Refrigerators, Kitchen Islands, and Other Cult Objects Kitchens from the Second World War to Today

Gert Kähler

75

The Kitchen Today. And a Little Bit Yesterday. And Tomorrow, Too, Of Course. On Kitchen Styles and Lifestyles

Christina Sonderegger

95

Between Progress and Idling: The Standard Kitchen Notes on the Development of Swiss Kitchen Norms

Brigitte Kesselring

113

From Restrictive Norms to Greater Freedom Kitchen Planning Today

Marion von Osten

131

Ghostly Silence The Unemployed Kitchen

René Ammann

149

To Table! To Table?

157

Select Bibliography

159

Illustration Credits, Acknowledgments

Klaus Spechtenhauser

Die praktische Küche [The practical kitchen] exhibition, Gewerbemuseum Basel [Basel Museum of Arts and Crafts], 9 February–16 March 1930: Cupboard in one of the exhibited kitchens.

Foreword

Dwelling is more popular than ever. Whether in exhibits, scholarly studies, trend-conscious lifestyle magazines, or easily consumable coffee-table books, the complex factors informing humanity’s condition in its lived environment have become the object of diverse and increasingly intense investigations. The new book series Living Concepts intervenes at the juncture of aseptic coffee-table book and academic publication. Selected topics from the field of dwelling are presented with concision and scholarly rigor and in an appealing format. Along with supplying an informative foundation for a given thematic, Living Concepts introduces current trends, scrutinizes received notions, and hopes to provide impetus for future developments – and all of this once or twice yearly in both German and English. Living Concepts is published by the ETH Wohnforum, an interdisciplinary research group housed in the Faculty of Architecture of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. By investigating the interplay and tensions between humans, society, and built space, the group mediates between theory and practice. With Living Concepts, the ETH Wohnforum aims to set a course informed by cultural studies, to document insights provided by the social sciences, and to provide a platform for a critical coming-toterms with the side effects of modernity. It is no accident that this first volume is dedicated to the kitchen. The kitchen has always been the navel of the home; and cultural and social changes are vividly reflected in it. The kitchen is where everyday undertakings and weekend amusements, mysterious essences and intimate longings, creative ambitions and the fashions of the day congeal in an exciting mélange. More on all these aspects in the following pages! Many thanks to all those who contributed to the success of this project, above all to the authors themselves and to the many institutions and companies for graciously providing images. We are especially grateful to Birkhäuser Publishers for taking on this venture and to all the sponsors without whose financial engagement this first volume of Living Concepts would never have come to be.

7

Johanna Rolshoven

The Kitchen: Terra Incognita An Introduction

Kitchens are having a boom. Increasingly, attention is being paid not only to kitchen design and furniture, but to the kitchen’s social function – as a space for food preparation and other everyday activities, as a space for both socializing and retreat – between necessity and leisure, functionality and pleasure. The kitchen, it would seem, has tapped the pulse of the times. In our late modern era, in which the layering of various times and spaces has led to the constant overburdening of everyday life, researchers into everyday culture have noticed an increase in individual strategies for maintaining security, and philosophers have diagnosed the retreat of the individual into the “pre-political sphere of the oikos.”1 Kitchen designers Sergio Tarducci and Riccardo Vincenzetti agree: their objective is to create “a traditional hearth for the third millenium, a hearth for the family to gather around.”2 This book may well be an attempt to resist trends antagonistic to the kitchen, identified here by the brilliant “private detective of kitchen imagery,” Marion von Osten. When an architect or designer defines the hearth as “the heart of the home”3 and sees the kitchen of the future as “a hub for our emotions,”4 then we would like to believe him or her. Increasingly over the last few years the architect and/or designer has come to be seen as a late modern hero, a protagonist of publicity, as the “homo universalis, uniting in a single person rationality and creativity, artistic talent, technical know-how, reliability, and financial success.”5

Valencia 1952, photograph Elliott Erwitt.

Everything and the Kitchen Sink The pulse of the times happily coincides with the utility of purpose promised to us by advertising: in an information society characterized by the reduction of real jobs, the kitchen, too, has become subject to scientific rationalization. This was already the case with the study of nutrition and housework, as well as with the design of kitchen space and furniture, as both Brigitte Kesselring and Christina Sonderegger convincingly show in their respective essays. Similarly, not only have sensations of pleasure and happiness lately been embedded in scientific discourse, specifically that of a utilitarian-economical cast. Advertising strategy, too, is being pursued from the vantage point of science. Everywhere there is talk of the intelligence of new kitchen technology; and today’s copywriters deploy phrases like “ergonomics, functionality, and form,” “well-thought9

1–2 The kitchen as a site for inspiring ambience, poetic images, intense discussions, everyday work, conspiratory meetings, and, finally, as a place for creating delicious meals . . .

out allocation of space,” and “advanced processual understanding.”6 Even construction materials are presented as reflecting a “sophisticated attitude to culinary science.”7 The coarse distinctions8 in our society also get manifested in kitchen design: those who don’t keep up tend to be more conservative. Women, for example. The marketing pledge directed at them reflects the ideal of a leisure society in which the kitchen as a space for spending free time is taken for granted. Bauknecht, a company that in the 1960s claimed to know “what women want,” now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, tells its prospective customers to “live today” – thus granting to women the irrelevance of housework. “Because sometimes nothing is less important than a few grass stains.” Bauknecht washing-machines will take care of it.9 The Kitchen Table as a Force of Production We have far less scientific information about the actual conditions of life in the kitchen than we might like to think. Everyday kitchen culture has developed largely independently of architectural plans or of the attractive, glossy images provided by kitchen manufacturers. The architect’s model has, it would seem, played a very small role in how dwelling has evolved.10 Even identical kitchen furniture installed by the thousands in one residential development after an10

other looks astonishingly different after only a short time. The British theorist of technology and consumption Daniel Miller has argued that the study of consumption should be more firmly anchored in the anthropology of domestic space.11 Serial production of modern things, including the fitted kitchen, has never precluded the diversification of appropriation and use; on the contrary, it even provokes and enforces it.12 Having apparently eluded the realm of necessity, the kitchen has nevertheless remained a workshop, a desirable space for productive activity, in short, a “living space.”13 The kitchen table is where writers often produce their best works, where vacuum cleaners, inner tubes, even moped motors get repaired, where underwear gets ironed and fluorescent-tube sculptures are soldered together, where Christmas gifts are wrapped and combat rifles swabbed clean. It’s where we write birthday cards and letters of condolence, paint Easter eggs and make ceramics, put bandages on wounds, and, of course, where we prepare the food that sustains us and serve it on a daily basis, and often repeatedly throughout the day, no matter whether we’re irritated or in good spirits. It is where sandwiches are made, sauces stirred, vegetables sliced, potatoes peeled, where pan steaks are tenderized and chocolate is grated, where we dice and mince and knead and fold, and wipe up, of course, and wipe away. Whether it’s stuffing tomatoes, preparing fondue, mixing plaster, writing a poem, translating an article, doing homework, or doing taxes – all of these activities find support in and on the kitchen table. A whole society can be transformed in a kitchen, the productive forces of a culture organized. The kitchen table is where both the Prague Spring and the peace movement were conceived, and where every four years the winning goal of the World Cup gets kicked – at least for the average spectator. The world of kitchen culture merely confirms what is true for life worlds in general, i.e. that life’s political economy is far more influential on the psychology of habit than is human biology – a reliable catch-all concept that takes the blame for so much that is in fact culturally determined. According to a relationalist superstition, to which existentialists have since subscribed, domestic space is an essential human need. But this notion simply ignores so much else that is important. The global majority of nomadic and homeless peoples indicates that dwelling is a cultural form, one that in wealthy industrial nations has been pursued to the point of exaggeration. The “essential needs” are somewhere else. Dwelling is a fact of culture, not nature. Kitchen Culture as a Civilizing Process The cultural development of modernity can be described as the increasingly rationalized organization of everyday life, the most prominent theater of which is “the home.”14 As elsewhere, the key period here is the nineteenth century. The multifunctionality of pre-modern living spaces was replaced then by a modern industrial distribution of tasks. From now on, work and regeneration – i.e. cooking, eating, socializing, sleeping, and hygiene – were to occupy different spaces, in keeping with the values of the ascendant bourgeoisie. Taylorist efficiency made its entrance in no place more visibly than in the kitchen. The Swedish ethnologist Orvar Löfgren has called the kitchen a “cultural battlefield,” for here, at the symbolic 11

3 The man directs, the woman cooks: cooking show at the 2005 Swissbau in Basel.

navel of the home, the transformation of values from the old to the new was particularly evident. It was the nineteenth century, as well, that saw the kitchen unmistakably and emphatically assigned to the woman as her personal “realm.” The construction, or rather invention, of this “femina domestica” was a necessary counterpart to the new, bourgeois “homo oeconomicus” – the ascendant species of the industrial society that was helping to seal class distinctions in terms of both economy and habitus. The twentieth-century evolution of the kitchen is described in this volume by Michelle Corrodi and Klaus Spechtenhauser as a process of accommodating the kitchen to social transformation. This development – ending, for now, with the “happy coexistence” in the kitchen of today – can hardly be seen as linear. But one thing is clear: the more the man is freed from the economic imperative to work, the more leisure becomes a space for self-projection. It would seem that the kitchen’s time as “that desolate space on the margins of domestic life”15 is finally over. Its way to becoming a “theater” (Löfgren) for the “homo domesticus” appears to be a logically predetermined development. This late modern episode in the civilizing process has taken place in stages. Man’s path has been a rocky one, and one for which women initially showed little solidarity or comprehension: beginning with making a sandwich all on his own and inserting a forlorn frozen pizza – clumsily, and not always without hitting the floor first – into a successfully preheated oven, to actually using scissors to open a stubborn bag of frozen french fries and preparing spaghetti for the children for lunch, all the way to lovingly composing a three-course meal on the weekend – a feat that folklorist Carola Lipp has called a milestone in the civilization of the industrialized man.16 “You Wanted an Oven, Now You Have a Hobby.”17 Modern sociologists of leisure have painstakingly determined that this world of leisure and consumption is governed by the same principles that rule the world of work; but this does not necessarily follow for all features of everyday life, and the reverse is even less true. We would, for example, be taking such deregulation too literally were we to try translating into the world of work the kitchen’s physical condition following the preparation of that three-course meal on the weekend. Irony is a natural last defense for the woman in her rearguard action. She has witnessed the world to which she was beholden for decades being monopolized with increasing competence and innovativeness – and with the support of technical and aesthetic armaments. Gone are the times when modern kitchen construction was a matter, and hence a weapon, for men – when the “little lady” was provided with tiny fitted kitchens with ridiculously low sinks and countertops that gave any normal-sized woman painful back problems. Now that more men are cooking and finding their way into the kitchen, kitchens have acquired more generous proportions and are designed as open kitchen/living spaces, thus relieving their users of the high degree of body control that was necessary for survival in the earlier, smaller kitchens.

12

4–5 Impending transformation from “femina domestica” to “femina oeconomica”? Images of “kitchen & woman” introduced with market-oriented savvy in the mid-1950s and 2005 respectively.

Brave New Kitchen From now on, the luxurious high-tech kitchen will inhabit an intelligent, wirelessly networked home. Along with Gerd Selle we can define it in good conscience as the “classroom of a second modernity”18 in which “the man who cooks strikes the tone.”19 “We have never seen as many men in the catalogues of kitchen manufacturers as we do today. There they are, cleaning the vegetables and checking on cooking times.” “Intelligent and beautifully designed technology” draws men to things like Miele’s Compact Class or Navitronic Touch Control systems and has guaranteed the triumph of the electronic steamer, as Brigitte Kesselring shows in her contribution. As ethnographer Hilde Malcomess reports from the 2005 Cuisinale in Cologne, the biannual kitchen furniture fair: “until a few years ago kitchen manufacturers were still basing their plans on the mysterious triangle of sink, stove, and refrigerator. Now, completely different forces are at work. The classic triangle has lost its function, and a new concept of communication, cooking, and living has come to the fore – one that puts the hearth in the center of the dwelling space and of technological progress.”20 The new kitchens look high-grade and expensive, but their designs – at least according to the advertisements – signify an emotional experience: the life of the senses and sophistication. Only the mean-hearted, Malcomess’s commentary suggests, would see in current trends in kitchen design a parallel to the oikos of the traditional eat-in kitchen, whose “bad air was once expunged with such revolutionary fervor from the so-called Frankfurt kitchen,”21 and that has remained with us in the form of an obstinate throw-back, the “ecological kitchen,” 22 the communual living biotope of the 1970s and 1980s. Conditions for effecting the long-overdue cultural transformation of the species “femina domestica” into “femina oeconomica” look rather good, judging from the visuals. But we should be careful. History teaches us restraint. As a rule, after any initial thrust forward most social developments swing back to a less anxiety-ridden median; and things are no different with gender relations in the kitchen. Following the iconographic burst of advertising euphoria about the man in the kitchen, we find ourselves now, in mid-2005, back at “go”. At least in the kitchens in Swiss magazine Ideales Heim [Ideal home]. Here, the women are in charge or no one is. For

13

6 Progress and design for the woman at home. Men have always known best what women want (Elektra-Technovision by Hasso Gehrmann, 1968–70).

instance, Maya Gafner of Geroldswil, in an advertisement for Mörgeli kitchens, enthuses: “Mine is the prettiest!”23 But even she doesn’t really seem to want to cook anymore, or know how to, as Gert Kähler and Alice Vollenweider confirm in their perceptive contributions to this volume. The form and the man himself, as designer, still predominate: his portrait appears at the lower edges of each image of the various kitchens and so gets worked into the sales pitch. A closer reading of the copy, of descriptors like “seems lighter than air and has the allure of all new materials,”24 leads one to wonder if our society can really distinguish between the kitchen, with its “exhilarating contours,”25 and its proud female owner. The fact that the metric dimensions of an average Swiss kitchen in the postwar period hardly differ, at least in numerals, from the ideal dimensions of a Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale is an index for the persistence of those technologies of the self resulting from the “architectural technologies of society” that Marion von Osten analyzes here. Still, we have little reason to be anxious. Designers, planners, and architects are merely executors of the economic reason of an era;26 their influence on how living spaces actually get used remains much less than it was feared to be. The development from blueprint to instructions for use in the life world is something that happened a long time ago anyway. Nevertheless, much remains to be done. Differentiating the ways that various social and gender groups make use of living space is an important task, one that researchers of technical and social engineering and planning should undertake only in interdisciplinary collaboration – ideally over a spread of finger foods on an eat-in kitchen table, as René Ammann suggests in his contribution – and under a cloud of life-world-inspiring kitchen fumes that, reassuringly, no new technology seems able to dispel.

14

1 Bernhard Waldenfels, “Heimat in der Fremde,” in Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, ed. Heimat. Analysen, Themen, Perspektiven (Bonn, 1990): 109–121; 117. 2 Mirko Beetschen, “Kitchen Stories,” Ideales Heim 2 (February 2005): 102–114; 103. 3 Kitchen designer Alberto Colonello, cited in ibid., 110. 4 Ibid., 104. 5 Anneke Bokern, “Gutaussehende Alleskönner. Architekten als Werbeträger in einer Rotterdamer Ausstellung,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung 89 (18 April 2004): 23. 6 Bulthaup advertisement, Ideales Heim 2 (February 2005): 3. 7 Suter-Inox advertisement, ibid., 47. 8 Martin Scharfe, “Die groben Unterschiede: Not und Sinnesorganisation: Zur historisch-geselleschaftlichen Relativität des Geniessens beim Essen,” in Tübinger Beiträge zur Volkskultur, ed. Utz Jeggle et al. (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1986): 13–28. 9 At least that was what a 2004 German television commercial promised. 10 Joost Meuwissen, “Darstellung des Wohnens,” in Lebenslandschaften: Zukünftiges Wohnen im Schnittpunkt zwischen privat und öffentlich, ed. Peter Döllmann and Robert Temel (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002): 26–30; 26. 11 Daniel Miller, “Appropriating the State on the Council Estate,” MAN 23 (1988): 353–372. 12 See Martine Ségalen and Christian Bromberger, “L’objet moderne: de la production sérielle à la diversité des usages,” Ethnologie française 26, 1 (1996): 5–16. 13 Arclinea advertisement, Ideales Heim 10 (October 2004): 61. 14 Orvar Löfgren, “The Sweetness of Home: Trautes Heim,” in Ehe, Liebe, Tod. Studien zur Geschichte des Alltags, ed. Peter Borscheid and Hans J. Teuteberg (Münster: Coppenrath, 1983): 80–96. 15 Elisabeth Katschnig-Fasch, “Wohnen – Aspekte zu einer volkskundlich/kulturanalytischen Erforschung der Alltagskultur,” Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 121 (1991): 59–68; 64. 16 Carola Lipp, “Der industrialisierte Mensch: Zum Wandel historischer Erfahrung und wissenschaftlicher Deutungsmuster,” in Der industrialisierte Mensch, ed. Michael Dauskardt and Helge Gerndt (Hagen: Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum, 1993): 17–43; 28. 17 Siemens advertisement, Ideales Heim 2 (Feb 2005), 5. 18 Gerd Selle, “Innen und aussen – Wohnen als Daseinsentwurf zwischen Einschließung und erzwungener Hoffnung” in Döllman and Temel, Lebenslandschaften, 209–228; 221. 19 Hilde Malcomess, “Kochen ist männlich,” Rheinischer Merkur 2, 20 January 2005. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 See Michael Andritzky, “Der elektrische und der ökologische Haushalt – zwei Szenarien,” in Oikos – Von der Feuerstelle zur Mikrowelle. Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel, ed. Michael Andritzky (Giessen: Anabas, 1992): 450–452; 452. 23 Mörgeli advertisement, Ideales Heim 2 (February 2005), 115. 24 Bulthaup advertisement, ibid., 3. 25 Corian advertisement, ibid., 50. 26 Selle, “Innen und aussen,” 216.

15

Alice Vollenweider

We Should Be Happy That Kitchens Are Still Getting Built At All

As long as we continue to think about building kitchens, all is not lost, and old-fashioned devotees of the traditional dinner table can continue to look forward to leaving a stressful morning of work for a warm mid-afternoon meal with the family followed by a brief siesta. As long as the children are not being fed at daycare or in the school lunchroom, while their parents satisfy their hunger in the cafeteria at work or polish off a sandwich at their desks. Today hardly anyone knows why church bells ring at eleven in the morning: to remind housewives that it is time to start cooking. Those who can afford it order the lunch menu in finer restaurants, while others prefer to dine in fast food establishments, where they can have their choice of pad thai, shwarma, hamburgers, sushi, etc. The health-conscious among them opt for the salad or fruit and granola in a plastic bowl. Barbara says that eating a big mid-day meal is a waste of time. Even Manuel, who works at home, is terrorized by deadlines and makes do with cheese and bread and maybe a couple of pears and an apple. Claudia eats half a container of yogurt and a whole graham cracker. Others are satisfied with a glass of Protiline, the protein-rich nutritional supplement with life-enhancing minerals and vitamins and an enticing banana flavor. Even those who eat lunch at home can easily do so without a kitchen. A microwave in the hallway is enough to heat up a package of Dorade à la provençale in just minutes, and it’s still based on a recipe by Paul Bocuse. What more could one wish for? In the evenings, shops are open until eight, gas stations until midnight. In many places you can get anything you want. And if all else fails, you can always call the local pizza joint and have your favorite pie delivered by moped in less than thirty minutes. It’s no surprise that shops for household wares have disappeared in almost all central European cities. Their countless useful or superfluous appliances no longer find users. Cookbooks of all sorts, on the other hand, are in demand. As are television chefs who laugh and smile throughout the day on all channels and never make a mistake. Their task is less to teach viewers how to cook than to console women who no longer cook and demonstrate to them, in time-lapse, how easy it can be. But when, motivated by Jamie Oliver and other stars, they cheerfully set about to grill a meal of green asparagus and no one ends up liking it, they return, disappointed, to their trusty packaged soups and fish sticks, 17

with a pre-washed and pre-mixed salad tossed directly out of the plastic bag. The produce vendor morosely remarks that people no longer know how to cook, no longer know what to do with the various sorts of artichokes or the tart radicchio di treviso she offers; even her delicate French shallots are merely eyed suspiciously then passed over. The thrifty neighborhood butcher no longer earns his money by dint of the quality of the meat he sells, but by the affordable lunch menu he offers, which can be gotten as take-away or eaten right there in the shop. People are clearly no longer as proficient at cooking as they used to be, but never has so much been said and written about food. There are, nevertheless, numerous individual gourmets and groups of ambitious lay chefs, who passionately talk about Spanish artichokes with beef marrow and terrine de fois gras de canard and cannot agree on what the best variety of Scottish oyster is. Architects took this epochal transformation in eating and cooking habits seriously, and in the eighties they made the kitchen an autonomous space. No longer is the kitchen the domestic center of the home, where smells of coffee, fresh bread, beef bouillon, asparagus, or fresh strawberry preserves waft through the air depending on the time of day. Instead, the kitchen has been incorporated into the living and dining space, making for a single, larger, and more expansive room. Which is not to everyone’s taste, however. Gabriela, for example, wouldn’t mind being able to close the door, firstly because ventilation technology still is not that advanced, and secondly because she doesn’t want everyone in the kitchen with her. When she cooks for guests, she needs to concentrate and have her own space. For example, when checking to see if the pasta is ready, she usually throws a noodle against the wall, in true neapolitan manner; if it sticks, then it’s al dente and ready to serve. It must be said, however, that almost any kitchen is only as good as the chef cooking in it. Whether spacious or cramped, integrated into the dwelling or cut off from it, the kitchen’s structure is determined by the cook. Her or his experience, values, and imagination condition how it is furnished. Good cooks don’t grow on trees, nor are they made in cooking courses or by reading cookbooks. What is important is that one take pleasure in eating, be curious, enjoy asking questions, and be able to concentrate and work meticulously. Useful tools include the Fülscher Kochbuch [Fülscher Cookbook] and the Basler Kochschule [Basel Cooking Course], both of them reliable guides that explain how to make mayonnaise without a hitch, cook schnitzel for more than two, or whip up a tasty sorrel purée. All without having to spend a fortune on technology, with just two or three well-sharpened knives and a hand blender for the purée. All the other gadgetry is unnecessary, all the various kitchen appliances, mixing and grating machines, electric bread-slicers, meat-grinders, and can-openers. If you can do without a deep freezer because you do not like frozen foods, you can just as easily do without a microwave oven. And who needs an electronically automated kitchen system? Any cook worth his or her salt knows best when a meal is ready or needs to fry or steam or boil longer. The truly fascinating thing about cooking, what makes it such a wonderful and unique experience, is the intensity with which it en18

gages our senses as we shop for and prepare wholesome, natural products. This has less to do with their freshness per se: one should recognize how the aroma of basil and peppers and eggplant changes and becomes fuller and more intense with age. Everything is in flux, and a good cook responds to the quality of her ingredients in the here and now. In the spring, she softens the pepper’s as-yet unmatured tartness by adding a teaspoon of sugar. By late summer, it is no longer necessary. Hence it is also impossible to indicate the measure of a recipe’s ingredients down to the ounce. A good cook needs room to maneuver in order to be precise. How ridiculous to indicate eight leaves of basil, when the leaves themselves can be of entirely different sizes. Not to mention the variable aroma of this delightful herb. The Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi, who considered himself an enthusiastic amateur chef, once told me something very true and beautiful about the art of cooking. He sometimes cooked, he said, merely to pass the time on a long afternoon, preparing for instance a Tuscan ribollita, which took a fair while. The white beans need to be boiled, and the vegetable and herbs finely minced. The hard bread has to be cut rather laboriously into thin slices. Hours would pass. He would light a cigarette, have a sip of wine, listen to music, chat, and the melancholy would disperse. Cooking is actually a kind of Zen for the average person. And any man or woman can learn the skills necessary to practice it. And at the end, instead of nothingness, you have a tasty vegetable stew.

Michelle Corrodi

On the Kitchen and Vulgar Odors The Path to a New Domestic Architecture Between the Mid-Nineteenth Century and the Second World War

Rationalizing the work process can never be learned too early: kitchen pass-through in the Weber House, Männedorf, Canton of Zurich (1932/33, Werner M. Moser).

The Kitchen as “Necessary Evil”: The Nineteenth-Century Bourgeois Household According to the nineteenth-century bourgeois ideal of femininity, the function of a housewife was nothing less than to be “the soul of the household.”1 Due to her “natural qualifications,” it was up to her to create a “happy home,” a hearth of well-being geared entirely toward the husband’s recuperation from work. The home, by contrast, was to be as free of work as possible, at least on the surface. The demonstration of female leisure and expensive self-display were important elements in the bourgeoisie’s need to document its status.2 The outside world was not supposed to notice anything of the woman’s activities; and the woman was supposed to “keep her hands clean.” The presence of at least one maid was proof to the public that the lady of the house had no need to work. Another reason lay in the ideal of a family community based on love rather than benefit, one in which the woman’s activity was considered an act of love.3 The contradiction between the domestic assiduousness ascribed to the housewife by virtue of her gender and the fact that she was at the same time not supposed to work, was covered up by a subterfuge: housework was defined as the work of love. Even when the work was considerable, it was to remain invisible, especially to the man, despite the fact that its product was intended for him. Countless how-to manuals for “house mothers” counsel the novice housewife on how and when to work in order to provide her husband with a clean, tidy, and comfortable home. The housewife was de facto in charge of her own, clearly defined area of responsibility, the “commander-in-chief” of the internal oikos. Relevant literature frequently portrays her as the tireless custodian of the hearth. In reality, necessary work was generally delegated to the maid or the cook. In this context, the kitchen was by and large excluded from the upper middle class family’s sphere of thinking and acting. As a work area, the kitchen was considered an unavoidable, but secondary component of the house.4 This subordinate status was reflected in floor plans as well. The kitchen generally was assigned a peripheral place, as far as possible from those spaces where the family lived and socialized – kitchen odors were considered vulgar. Architects thus positioned the kitchen in accordance with the occupants’ practical and symbolic needs.5 In urban, upper middle class households, the 21

kitchen was where food was prepared and the servants spent their time. It was the dining room where the food got served and consumed. Far into the twentieth century, a typical kitchen in an upper middle class apartment or villa was furnished with a sink trough permanently installed near the window and a free-standing stove with a stovepipe and multiple burners that was heated by coal or wood.6 The walls were lined with rows of detached shelving units – generally cabinets that could be locked – where the entire arsenal of cooking utensils was stored. Lastly, the kitchen always included a table, an indispensable surface for working. Bound to the domestic sphere of influence, the lady of the house was responsible for organizing the household according to the latest scientific insights into hygiene and nutrition.7 However, as her agency was regulated by precisely defined rules within a closed system of practices, the daily preparation of meals and management of the household presented considerable demands. This led to an increase in the work load due to the rapidly dwindling number of domestic servants around the turn of the century. For some overwhelmed housewives, hysteria was the only way to break out of the role so rigidly assigned to them, as concerned economists, psychologists, doctors, and architects of the time determined. Their efforts were directed one by one against every-

1 Stadtpark-Hof, Vienna III (1907/08, Emil Mader): floor plan, top floor. – Typical floor plan of an imperial-era apartment building at the edge of a block, with representative street façade and plain façade to courtyard. A central corridor runs between analogous apartments. Living rooms are oriented to the street; less important rooms like bedrooms, bath, wc, and kitchen face the courtyard. 2 Patrician kitchen in the Villa an der Halde, Zurich-Enge (1906, Friedrich Wehrli).

22

thing they considered “pathological” about dwelling. Especial attention was given to the housewife’s body, which was to be protected from becoming fatigued. Either fatigue or an overtaxed physical constitution were put to blame when a housewife demonstrated typical symptoms like irritability, temper, or fainting spells.8 Preventive strategies focused on the reduction of housework and optimal efficiency: fatigue was ascribed not least to antiquated organization of the home and to poorly equipped working areas. The “Discovery” of the Kitchen Although the onset of the new century did not see immediate changes in kitchen design, the everyday structures of bourgois domestic architecture were nevertheless called into question by the life reform movement, women’s suffrage, and the youth movement. Art Nouveau, the English country-house style, and the arts and crafts movement all shook up the conventional aesthetic.9 All of life was to be “permeated with authentic art,” and this went for the otherwise forsaken kitchen, too. Both the Art Nouveau, movement’s ideal of the total work of art and the attempts to reform domestic architecture were intended to contribute to a revaluation of kitchen space, whose relative revaluation from the perspective of architecture was being pursued by various means.10 A few kitchens designed for upper-middle-class clients around 1900 register their architects’ intentions to integrate kitchen furniture into an overarching décor scheme.11 More attention was now being paid to the shape of individual elements and their arrangement in conjunction with each other. Artistic composition was thus foregrounded in the furnishing of the kitchen, as is illustrated quite vividly by the 1901 kitchen designed by Peter Behrens for his own house in the Darmstadt artists’ colony Mathildenhöhe. Here, curved

3–5 Kitchen in the Behrens House, Mathildenhöhe Artists’ Colony, Darmstadt (1901, Peter Behrens): cross section; two views. – Whether the curved form of the ledge supports, the rounded edges of the open shelves, or the oval cut-outs in the cabinet doors – everything conforms to the leitmotif of the curve.

23

forms dominate throughout the space. Even though Behrens followed the bourgeois tradition of having the kitchen on the ground floor, he nevertheless included the kitchen in his concept for the entire house. Another example is the kitchen of the Villa Kurz in Knorr [Jägerndorf], Czech Republic, designed in 1902/03 by Leopold Bauer. Here, the clearly outlined forms and contours of the furniture combine into an ensemble that is subject to the primacy of the square. The practical ordering of individual pieces of furniture in a row along the wall, together with their sober monochromatic color, give the room a cool, almost sterile atmosphere. This was in keeping with the widespread concern, advanced by the hygiene movement, for cleanliness in the kitchen. Similarly, the compact furnishings in the kitchen of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, designed in 1905 to 1911 by Josef Hoffman, are made up of individual cabinets that conform exactly to the original layout. Kitchen as Nucleus: The Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Household For the majority of the population, even smaller and simpler versions of the bourgeois dwelling were unaffordable. Working class apartments generally comprised two rooms with at most a small, additional closet. In order to pay the rent, occupants were often forced

6 Kitchen in the Villa Franz Kurz, Krnov [Jägerndorf], Czech Republic (1902/03, Leopold Bauer; destroyed). – Entirely committed to hygiene: not only the floor is tiled, but the walls are tiled halfway up as well – in white, so that dirt will be easier to see. The entire back wall is taken up by an enormous built-in cupboard where pots and pans are kept protected from smoke and grease. 7 Kitchen in the Palais Stoclet, Brussels (1905–11, Josef Hoffmann). – Although the U-shaped facilities are partially equipped with work surfaces, the middle of the room is still occupied by a traditional large work table. As in Leopold Bauer’s kitchen, the floor is tiled in a black-and-white chessboard pattern; the walls are tiled all the way to the ceiling.

24

to take in extra lodgers with whom they would share their mattresses in “shifts.”12 The kitchen in a workers’ tenement was located generally in the entry area of the apartment and was used by the occupants as a multifunctional living area. Measuring 130–160 sq. ft., this area was where daily life took place, where the occupants ate, worked, washed, and in some cases slept. Condemned by doctors and social reformers, these often unfit dwellings were characterized by inefficient stoves and smoky air: the kitchen stove was the only source of heat and was used equally for cooking and for heating.13 In the middle of the kitchen there was generally a table that served both as a workspace and for the preparation and consumption of meals. This was the real center of the apartment. In the absence of a “parlor,” the kitchen was made into a more liveable space through various means and features. In contrast to the white-lacquered kitchen furniture of the bourgeois household, here wooden furniture either painted brown or left unpainted was preferred.

8 Mürzbogen Development, workers’ housing for the Gebr. Böhler & Co. steel plant, Kapfenberg, Austria (1900–05, Hans Frauneder): floor plan (1:400). 9 The working-class live-in kitchen as a living space for all (Dortmund, 1917).

A tablecloth for the table, a quilt for the sofa, embroidered cotton runners for the shelves all gave the room a comfortable ambience. Furniture and appliances were arranged in accordance with this principle rather than practical criteria such as work routine. Cooking was at the center of everyday domestic life, but had to be fit in with the work schedule at the factory.14 More and more women saw themselves forced to work in factories just to make sure the family had enough to eat every day. Food preparation thus took place under the pressure of time constraints, which frequently led to serious nutritional problems. Living conditions among the lower classes thus became an object of general concern, not least because the maintenance of workers’ health had economic consequences for the state. Working-class women were often reproached by doctors and social reformers for cooking badly and uneconomically: inefficient management of the household was blamed for the poor 25

10 The exemplary proletarian woman: the wife of Swiss Communist Wilhelm Willi at the stove, in her hand an issue of the German Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) with Ernst Thälmann on the cover (early 1930s).

physical health of many families.15 Some social reformers even held the view that the solution to “the work problem” could be found in the “working women’s cooking pot.”16 Their anger was directed primarily against the excessive alcohol consumption by heads of families, which would deplete a good part of a family’s budget. One way out, they felt, would be to improve living conditions, thus keeping the husband away from the tavern – and from the circles of Social Democrats to be found there. The demand for “healthy living” was accompanied by another area of critique, that of deficient hygiene. Particularly galling to social reformers was the fact that in working-class households the kitchen was used not only as a living area but also for sleeping. The public battle for order, hygiene, and cleanliness went on well into the twentieth century. For the proletarian woman, it was a daily battle on two fronts. Ccoordinating her work in the home with her work for income was an enormous burden that was generally not without consequences for the household itself. Architectural reforms of domestic space were thus accompanied by an awareness that the woman’s double burden needed to be counteracted. While this double burden had been a problem for working class households since the middle of the nineteenth century, it was only at the end of the century that upper-middle-class households were affected by it. The general economic situation and decreasing incomes accompanied by changing expectations made it increasingly necessary to manage the housework without a maid. With expanded occupational possibilities and regulated working hours, young women were able to support themselves in other fields. The necessity of economizing housework was considered an important matter for the bourgeois class anyway, and was the basis of rationalization attempts like those that occurred in the twenties.17 Reorganization of the Household at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Following the First World War, economic and social relations underwent a fundamental transformation. The experiences of war, mass unemployment, economic depression, and housing shortages, as well as the breakup of the extended family, which had begun with industrialization, and the emancipation of women, all required new forms of coexistence and habitation. One of the most urgent problems was that of building homes. Architects were confronted for the first time with the challenge of creating mass housing, a task that they at first attempted in smaller areas with housing estates and row houses. In reaction to the breakdown of political and social systems, an intensive debate about prevailing injustices took place in architecture circles. Architects considered how these new circumstances could be accommodated architecturally. The focus of their concern was the working class. But a critique of typical bourgeois lifestyles and dwelling habits likewise led to the rejection of old housing forms as outmoded. A substantial reconception seemed necessary. It was equally necessary, in the aftermath of the nineteenth century’s restrictive notion of femininity, that roles for women reflect these new circumstances. The lady of the house was now the housewife. Soon the term “rationalization” became an all-im26

11 Housewife in the kitchen, 1920s. – Until the beginning of the 20th century, the stove had a special status in every kitchen. As a wood- or coal-burning block oven, it was accessible from at least three sides. This concept was retained by the new, similarly large-format “gas cooking apparatuses.” These models, which were introduced into kitchens after the turn of the century and superseded the older ovens, were accepted only gradually as women had to dispel the prejudice that food cooked on them would taste of gas.

portant concept; given the absence of servants and the double burden of the gainfully employed housewife, timesaving took on an increasingly vital role. Instead of delegating work, housewives now had to find ways of executing it more economically and efficiently, which would lead to the compatibility of job and household. The kitchen as the work world of the housewife came under increasing scrutiny. After 1900, a series of politically active women began making the effectivization and collectivization of housework a public issue.18 The progressive wing of the women’s movement essentially demanded a “liberation from housework.”19 The most radical of their initiatives was directed at the dissolution of private households in favor of collective households, the so-called “one kitchen house,”20 where the housework of individual apartments was pooled in a central administration unit. Well into the twenties in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland a number of specific projects were established that involved different service facilities depending on the target group. Nevertheless, the one-kitchen house was not very successful in proving its relevance for home building. The ideal of a communal kitchen arrangment may have been a popular idea among bourgeois intellectuals (“the housewife has more time for useful housework and for raising her children”21), but did not yield the anticipated success. Opponents of the one-kitchen house were afraid that it would have adverse effects on familial cohesion and on taste, inasmuch as the housewife was no longer cooking meals with her family’s particular taste buds in mind.22 The onekitchen house ended up failing not least due to interpersonal strife and the varying material circumstances of the families occupying a given house.23 Rationalization: The Woman’s Liberation The reform movement for the one-kitchen house died out in the middle of the twenties. In place of a centralized economy of households, the rationalization of the small, private household now became the goal. People wanted to exhaust the possibilities promised by the increased technologization of the home. One specific aim was to improve the kitchen’s spatial arrangement through a cost-effective reorganization of the floor plan. This reinvention of the woman’s everyday work setting resulted directly from rationalization efforts taking place in the United States. There, the translation of Taylorist work methods to the home entailed new principles of saving (time, energy, space, and money), which were to bring with them the hoped-for easement of work. Following this American model, architects of the New Building movement of the twenties integrated measures such as more efficient handles, reduced distances, and timesaving appliances into their designs. Household rationalization originated in the United States in conjunction with the so-called servant question. According to the American social worker Catherine Beecher, the employment of servants was irreconcilable with the democratic principle of equality. She understood the kitchen as a workplace and called for the cooperation of all family members as well as improved organization of space and working conditions. Beecher saw perfect working conditions for a housewife manifested in the functionally minimized galleys of Mississippi steamboats, and in 1869 she designed 28

an “ideal kitchen” based on that model. In her proposal, Beecher integrated the most important areas of activity into larger functional units. At the beginning of the twentieth century, another American, Christine Frederick, set about analyzing work methods in the kitchen analogously with those on the conveyor belt. Her 1913 book The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management, in which she tackled issues of household rationalization, was translated into German in 1921 by Irene Witte. The ideas expressed in the book fell on fertile ground in architecture circles. For example, in his 1924 guidebook Die neue Wohnung: die Frau als Schöpferin [The new home: the woman as creator], Bruno Taut took Frederick’s work-saving principles as an occasion to badmouth women’s penchant for knickknacks. He called for a practical, modern interior décor and asked women to destroy all the “gewgaws, rubbish, and superfluities”24 among their household effects. One of the most prominent representatives of these rationalization efforts was the Munich economist Dr. Erna Meyer, whose book Der neue Haushalt [The new household] was a bestseller. If housework, viewed as “unproductive,” had largely gone ignored in the past, Meyer’s equation of the kitchen with the factory (the “smallest factory in the world”) was meant to promote the ideological appreciation of the work that housewives did. She viewed housework as a relevant factor for the national economy; and in countless articles she tirelessly pointed to its economic significance.25 This was motivated not so much by the hoped-for physical easement of the housewife as by the idea that an integrated rationalization of all material housework would make the housewife “free” for her own, immaterial tasks. Meyer demonstrated that hysteria and bad temper were symptoms of an “unsatisfied domestic need,” i.e. a sign of a poorly organized workplace.26 The new household, where the woman would be the “creative master of her duties rather than their slave,” required not only new quarters, but an inner reorientation of the woman herself, which was linked to being appropriately educated. This last was spelled out by Meyer in ten precepts, in which she did not neglect to mention even the importance of “correct posture” and “methodically conducted physical exercise.” Kitchen as “Hot Topic”: The Development of the Work Kitchen Practically all well-known architects of the time designed kitchens, for alongside designing housing estates and housing, the world of the housewife provided the avant-garde of architecture a suitable 12–13 Kitchen designed by Catherine Beecher, 1869. Floor plan; preparation and cleaning areas. – Beecher reorganized the work process: the three pertinent fields, storage, preparation, and cleaning, were organized according to sequence. Due to the heat formation, the stove was quartered in a separate room.

29

14 Erna Meyer, Der Neue Haushalt [The new household], 1926. – No more time-consuming busywork! This housewife is on her way to a new life, free of unnecessary work.

area of activity.27 Furthermore, New Building architects found in the suffrage movement comrades-in-arms in their battle for housing reform. The kitchen was seen as a modern task for the architect, and that no doubt had to do with the technological euphoria of the time. Another reason why so much fuss was made about kitchens was that the practical, unadorned designs required of modern architects were often appraised as “cold” by untrained eyes, and their implementation in the living room or bedroom met with resistance. Not so in the kitchen. Here, the reorganization and mechanization of the life world was generally accepted. The new spirit could be demonstrated in the kitchenette, and that made the kitchen the “bridgehead of modernity in home building.”28 “Authentic” everyday needs, discerned by following motion diagrams of occupants, were supposed to be the point of departure for designing the new home. “Dwelling” was broken down into existential necessities like sleeping, cooking, eating, and washing; and the design of the floor plan was undertaken following the formula of “one room = one function.” Economizing movement naturally led to the idea of the compact kitchen. Nevertheless, arguments for streamlined, energy- and work-saving paths or for “practical furniture” could not disguise the fact that cost pressures made it necessary to curtail floor plans. One group of New Building architects advocated outfitting the “subsistence home” designed for the masses with a “work kitchen” conceived for the smallest possible floor space – a novum in working class households of the twenties. An early example of this was Anton Brenner’s “housing machine kitchen” (1924/25), which was designed for a Vienna municipal housing block and at 41 sq. ft. was rather cramped. Its scrupulous design already expressed ideas that a few years later would help Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s “Frankfurt Kitchen” achieve its breakthrough. What was new was the architects’ concern for future occupants and their needs, or in Bruno Taut’s words, “the architect has the idea, the housewife puts it into action.” Most architects found themselves on shaky ground when conceiving of the home as the woman’s workplace, and they relied on the expertise of housewives. Erna Meyer had argued repeatedly in her writings for the “systematic collaboration of architect and housewife.”29 An example of such collaboration was the 1927 “Die Wohnung” [The

The kitchen as the “bridgehead of modernity”: 15 “Reform cupboard” by Poggenpohl, 1928. 16 Round stove by Siemens, 1920s.

30

17–18 Apartment House, Rauchfangkehrergasse, Vienna (1924/25, Anton Brenner). View of the kitchen; floor plan. – Brenner’s tightly organized “living machine” was described in 1927 in the Deutsche Bauzeitung as “the most radical of Vienna’s experimental apartment houses.” A key factor in this was its tiny, 32-sq.-ft. kitchen.

home] exhibition at the Weissenhof in Stuttgart organized by the German Werkbund, whose directors had arranged beforehand to involve housewives. Topics such as “The Kitchen” and “Housework” were to be treated intensively, and the resulting design ideas exhibited. Erna Meyer, who had taken upon herself the role of advisor to the architects and composed guidelines for designing kitchens in the Weissenhofsiedlung buildings, nonetheless found only the kitchen designed by Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud to be impressive.30 Erna Meyer herself was to have the opportunity at the Stuttgart exhibition to realize her ideas for functional kitchen furniture. On display in the exhibition hall was the “Stuttgart Kitchenette” developed by her and Hilde Zimmermann – a kitchen niche that featured standardized, mobile elements that could be put to a variety of uses.31 In contrast to the built-in kitchen, it had the advantage of being customizable to different room sizes. Its L-shaped arrangement concentrated the work process on two sides of the room; the other two sides were free except for a pass-through to the living room. A floor space of 93 sq. ft. allowed for two persons to occupy the room, so that a mother and daughter could work together or a small child be cared for. The most forceful proposal, which was quite extreme in the degree and determination with which it organized workflow and in its minimization of space, went down in New Building history as the “Frankfurt Kitchen.” Designed by Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, it successfully combined stove, sink, cabinets, and counter space into a compact arrangement that far surpassed comparable designs in terms of reachability and ergonomics. The development of this kitchen was carried out on behalf of the “New Frankfurt” social housing program, for which the city’s Chief Building Surveyor, Ernst May, had retained the services of the young Austrian architect and entrusted her with the basic design of a standard kitchen.32 For her preliminary design, the realization of which occurred in a number of forms due to the multitude of building types, Schütte-Lihotzky took for her model the kitchens of the railway dining car company Mitropa. One substantial impulse, that of viewing the kitchen as an instrument of occupational psychology, came from Christine Frederick’s aforementioned book. Although Frederick had extensively analyzed

broom closet

anteroom

landing

living room

bedroom

WC

alcove

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

kitchen

gas meter, electric meter clothesrack waste disposal coal box Murphy bed, folded up by day Murphy bed, pulled down at night 7. night table, connect both parts of the screen

31

8. two-part screen 9. rod with blind, closes the bed alcove 10. tile oven 11. built-in cupboard 12. double bed for married couple 13. kitchen table, with cabinet below

14. gas oven 15. warm and cold rinsing basin with drip counter below 16. sink 17. drip counter while washing dishes 18. washing counter 19. sprinkler 20. flowers

lady

bath

gentleman

children alcove

living room

dining room

kitchen

hall

SPK

19–20 The experimental Am Horn House, Weimar (1923, Georg Muche and Benita Koch-Otte). View of kitchen; floor plan (1:200). – As a product of “rational design,” this kitchen displays all of the qualities of a modern kitchen. The L-shaped form is conceived as a unity with a continuous working surface and integrated gas stove. The functional staggering of kitchen, dining-room, and nursery allows the housewife to keep the children in view while working.

WC

guest room

WF

workflow in the kitchen, many questions about floor plan design remained to be answered. Schütte-Lihotzky now closed this gap by translating into the floor plan both physiological principles and her own experiences in experimental housing design. The most famous version of the kitchen – generally considered to be the “Frankfurt Kitchen” – was displayed in the Stuttgart exhibition hall: a narrow, lengthy floor layout with a surface area of only 70 sq. ft. This fitted kitchen was planned to the centimeter as a work space, pure and simple, and captivated exhibition-goers with its good proportions, harmonious distribution of cubes, light incidence, and hues. Contrary to the rather myopic, commonly held view that rational and ideological motives were what led to the construction of this “simple work kitchen” in Frankfurt, the real motive was duress born of necessity. No doubt alternatives were considered, but Schütte-Lihotzky’s preferred solution, an “eat-in kitchen” adjacent to the living room, could not be constructed for economic reasons.33 The “Frankfurt Kitchen” nevertheless introduced into working class households principles that previously were reserved only for bourgeois households: the separation of the kitchen from life in the form of a work kitchen, and its accouterment with built-in furniture. Schütte-Lihotzky’s rationalized fitted-kitchen design was to have a strong and long-lasting influence, with exhibitions – especially the Stuttgart exhibition at Weissenhof – representing an important medium for its circulation. Further shows dedicated to the kitchen or the household followed, such as the “New Kitchen” exhibition, which was organized in Berlin at the end of the twenties by Der Ring, a consortium of architects. According to the organizer, Hugo Häring, financial pressures made it necessary to restrict the exhibition’s topic to extreme reductions of floor space, hence its focus on the question “How small can a kitchen be?”34 A similar line was taken in the 1930 exhibition “The Practical Kitchen” at the Gewerbemuseum Basel [Basel Museum for Arts and Crafts]. In its catalogue, Erna Meyer assured readers that “in the future, we shall continue to see kitchens getting smaller.”35 The reasons for this, she 32

0

2.5

5m

21–23 Row house by J. J. P. Oud in the Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart (1927). View of kitchen and living/eating area; floor plan (1:100). 24 “Stuttgart Kitchenette” in the exhibition hall of the Werkbund Exhibition “Die Wohnung” [The home], Stuttgart-Weissenhof (1927), Erna Meyer, Hilde Zimmermann, and Building Inspector Keuerleben). – By and for women: The “Stuttgart Kitchenette” with swiveling stool, patented ironing table, and pantry cupboard with pull-out middle section for setting up a “household office.”

33

25 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s “Frankfurt Kitchen”: The kitchen for the household without household help. Presented as a model kitchen at the 1927 “Neuzeitliche Haushalt”, [Modern household] exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. View (left). – This model kitchen, commonly regarded as the “Frankfurt Kitchen”, was exhibited the same year at the Stuttgart Werkbund exhibition at the Weissenhof and garnered an incredible response.

26 Mitropa dining car kitchen, “for housewives, a particularly edifying example of ergonomics and reachability” (Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky).

27 Floor plan “Frankfurt Kitchen”. The long shape measures 6.1 x 11.3 ft., the smallest area possible, which was calculated by measuring movement paths and closely studying work processes. (1 stove, 2 counter, 3 cooking box, 4 fold-out ironing board, 5 storage cupboard, 6 swivel work stool, 7 table, 8 waste disposal, 9 dishrack, 10 sink, 11 storage drawers, 12 crockery cupboard, 13 rubbish and broom closet, 14 heater, 15 pull-out counters).

felt, lay in the shift in nutritional habits to finished products, which made it unnecessary to stock large supplies. The fact that women had jobs also played a role, inasmuch as this forced more and more people to have their main meal outside the home. By way of demonstrating that even greater minimization was possible, Basel architects created a number of model kitchens with very small floor plans. The smallest of these, Rudolf Preiswerk’s Kitchen No. 4, measured only 37 sq. ft. (!). Live-In Kitchen or Work Kitchen? With regard to the necessary floor plan reform that accompanied public housing projects and the dissolution of traditional forms of housing, opinions differed not least on the form and placement of the kitchen. Alongside representatives of the New Building, who generally favored a functional working kitchen with minimal floor space, there were also more moderate groups adhering to the traditional solution of a multifunctional live-in kitchen for workingclass households.36 It seems this view was a bit more realistic with regard to actual habits. Debates about the “right” type of kitchen not only took place in light of economic calculations, there was also the issue of how to implement certain social ideals architecturally. For those who favored the working kitchen, hygiene and cleanliness were the highest priority, which in their eyes made it

28 View to the working area and sink with overhead dishrack; to the right a supply cabinet with aluminum drawers designed by Harrer. – At times criticized for being “over-rationalized,” this arrangement fostered a radical reorientation of work habits and was often used “wrongly”. 29 View to the stove. – Designed down to the last detail with hygiene and ergonomics in mind: all built-in furniture were set on rounded concrete plinths that facilitated cleaning the floor underneath.

35

30 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897– 2000) in front of her Frankfurt home (photograph taken end of the 1920s).

vital to separate functions, specifically to demarcate the kitchen as an autonomous work area. In contrast to the old, “primitive” livein kitchen, it was thought that by implementing a need-oriented work kitchen, a more modern, and therefore superior, form of dwelling would be attained. A similar view was expressed by one contemporary commentator in the Deutsche Bauzeitung: “Let us consider what profit our domestic life has had from this new building. With it, the technologization of life infiltrates into the home of the individual. The kitchen becomes both a laboratory and an engine room . . .. Gone is the cozy sedateness of past kitchens, where the mother, expecting and raising children, ‘ran a tight ship.’ Working in the new household laboratory is doubtless more hygienic and affords the woman more time and energy for ‘higher activities.’ No longer are her movements defined by housework, but by gymnastics and sports, which are clearly much healthier and foster both energy and beauty.”37 Despite its modern valorization as operations management, kitchen work remained an inferior occupation that was not supposed to have too high a status in everyday life. Sensory qualities like smell were another disturbance to the cult of utility. Adolf Loos, a proponent of the pragmatic live-in kitchen solution, turned the tables on everyone. In his opinion, the exclusion of kitchen work was a consequence of a deficient culinary culture and had something to do with the (bad!) quality of cooking. In his

“Die praktische Küche” [The practical kitchen] exhibition, Gewerbemuseum Basel [Basel Museum of Arts and Crafts], 9 February –16 March 1930. 31 Poster designed by Helene HaasbauerWallrath 32 Rudolf Preiswerk’s 38 sq. ft. Kitchen No. 4. – “the mitropa dining-car kitchen . . . suggests to us that we have a long way to go before we discover the minimal kitchen floor plan for the home” (Rudolf Preiswerk).

36

chest kitchen

entry area

WC

dining room

seating

Werkbundsiedlung Neubühl, Zurich-Wollishofen (1928–1932). 33 Floor plan, Type C row house residence (1:200). – Typical New Building floor plan. With the break-up of the “habitation process” into individual functions, large, multifunctional spaces like the kitchen disappear, replaced by a smaller version of the bourgeois working kitchen. This was to be as isolated as possible, since the living room as the family’s “core” and primary activity area was not to be disturbed by “food preparation functions.” 34 Kitchen in Type A row house residence (almost identical to Type C). 35 Linking the kitchen and the living/dining area by way of a pass-through built into the kitchen cabinets. In this way, the kitchen door can remain shut. – A typical “functional” detail of the New Building, captured here by Sigfried Giedion.

pungent articles, he spoke against ergonomic rationalization and argued instead for the live-in kitchen, i. e. a living room with a hearth in it, precisely so that in more genteel households the cooks would have an audience to watch them.38 Loos not only favored the experiential advantages this would have for the family, he also emphasized the benefit it would have for the housewife, who thus would be more firmly integrated in family life.39 His concept stood in stark contrast to the “Frankfurt Kitchen” model of his former colleague Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, which with its cramped dimensions was not particularly suited to spending time in. What could have moved Schütte-Lihotzky, who in Vienna had once advocated live-in kitchens together with Loos, to change her views? The truth is that even then, in Vienna, the decision to promote the live-in kitchen had less to do with ideal motives than with purely practical ones. The preference for the live-in kitchen was based on the enforced frugality with heating material following the First World War, which foreclosed fueling multiple stoves or heating more than one room. With the introduction of gas heating, as was the case in Frankfurt, this argument lost its validity, since the heat from a gas stove was not enough to keep a room, let alone a family, warm. Looking back, Schütte-Lihotzky explains her decision for this or that model by the different problems presented by the respective housing situations in Vienna and Frankfurt. The consolidation of cooking, eating, and living saved space and costs and, inasmuch as no separate living room was planned, was appropriate for the Viennese settlement movement. The overriding goal there was to provide low-income families and individuals with roofs over their heads. In Frankfurt, however, the goal was to provide an example of modern living with the most progressive means available in the twenties. Schütte-Lihotzky herself saw the functional separation of living and cooking as a superior form of dwelling.40 A “Light” Alternative: The Eat-In Kitchen The intended users of the minimalist work kitchens so popular in reform-minded architecture circles came to accept them either only gradually or not at all. Many had problems with the austere practicality and were loathe to give up their sideboards and heavy furniture. Many tenants showed remarkable resistance to the so-called 37

counter

improvements and refused to give up their habit of eating in the kitchen. This made architects even more determined in their enlightenment efforts, not least by designing physical restrictions that would limit what users could do with the space on their own and force conformity to more “cultured” norms. Adolf Behne even spoke of putting occupants through a “diet of habitation.”41 However, even in the ranks of the reformers, the “simple work kitchen” was not without its detractors. Its biggest disadvantage, according to these critics, was that it made it difficult to look after children while cooking. Erna Meyer objected to the fact that in these cramped rooms there was only enough space for one person, which meant leaving a door open in order to keep the children in sight and in reach; but this then obviated the advantage of limiting cooking smells to the kitchen. Hence, Meyer proposed a living room with a separable kitchenette and ample ventilation and drafted a floor plan for the “Munich Kitchen,” which she designed together with Hanna Löv and Walther Schmidt for a 1928 housing development experiment executed by the Cooperative Building Association of the Bavarian Post and Telegraph Union in Munich.42 Conceived in contrast to the “Frankfurt Kitchen”, the “Munich Kitchen” was designed not for cooking but for eating, and thus represented a further devel-

live-in kitchen

cupboard sewing table cupboard

36–37 Type 7 Core (1923, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, in the Office of the Austrian Association of Allotment and Leisure Gardens [ÖVSK]), constructed 1:1 in September 1923 at the “5th Viennese Exhibition of Allotments, Leisure Gardens, and Residential Building” on the Rathausplatz in Vienna; floor plan; view. 38 Draft for working-class row houses, Type 1 (October/November 1920, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky); perspectival view of the kitchen.

38

opment of the traditional regional live-in kitchen – without its hygienic shortcomings. Major criticisms of the “Frankfurt” and “Stuttgart Kitchens” were taken into account. The “Munich Kitchen” thus had a glass wall dividing its 65 sq. ft. cooking area from the 205 sq. ft. living area, permitting the mother to watch her children playing in the living room. The square composition was an improvement on the narrow rectangle of the “Frankfurt Kitchen”, as were the variable shelving inside the cabinets and the free-standing sink, which allowed one to work while sitting. In general, all of the kitchens designed by modernist architects originated in similar ideas, the same ones that informed the “Frankfurt Kitchen”. All of them are equally guilty of functionalism, if in varying degrees.43 The same went for the “Munich Kitchen”: despite its conceptual differences and the fact that it came the closest of any of these models to the live-in kitchen, it was not a live-in kitchen in the traditional sense. Rather, it was an attempt to present the ideas of a new domestic architecture – that of the functional work kitchen – in a “light version,” thus making them palatable to a broader public. Implementing a Successful Model Nevertheless, none of the examples mentioned here came even close to having the reception that the “Frankfurt Kitchen” had. Even today, no attempt at coverage in dealing with the topic of the kitchen can afford to leave it out. The enormous popularity and practical success that the “Frankfurt Kitchen” enjoyed still cannot be explained solely by the density of its installations. It was installed in more than ten thousand apartments in Frankfurt. But in comparison to the housing achievements of larger cities like Vienna, Berlin, and Hamburg – where at least until the Second World War modern housing projects availed themselves primarily of more established types of kitchen – this was a negligible number. No, the reasons for the continued implementation of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s working kitchen can be more easily discerned in the larger social context. On the one hand, rationalization of the private household was in keeping with the times – although in terms of type of room, furniture, and unity of purpose, the “Frankfurt Kitchen” was a novum. On the other hand, it had to doing with extenuating circumstances that endowed the city of Frankfurt with a special role and that were in large measure tied to the forceful personality of Ernst May. May, who was in the unique political position of unifying the municipal offices of Chief Building Inspector and Building Surveyor in one person, had for obvious reasons a relatively free hand in implementing his modern vision. May’s fame together with Frankfurt’s role as the city of early modernism – a reputation it had begun to gain in the twenties and consolidated following the Second World War – doubtless played a part in May’s efficient use of the media.44 The “Frankfurt Kitchen”, energetically propagandized through newspaper articles, radio reports, and even documentary films, met with interest both at home and abroad. By the time of its presentation it had already garnered considerable fame and established itself as a perfect example of rationalized kitchen décor.

39

At least since the sixties, however, the live-in kitchen has become more prominent again. With growing prosperity and mounting demands – manifested in the increased living space per capita – the point is no longer merely to cover needs but to create surplus value.

live-in kitchen

closet

39–41 The “Munich Kitchen” (1928, Erna Meyer, Hanna Löv, Walther Schmidt) in the experimental settlement of the Bavarian Post and Telegraph Union, Munich; isometric projection; view; apartment floor plan (1 : 400).

room

live-in kitchen

room

room

room

The minimized working kitchen that was deemed necessary at the beginning of the twentieth century is now increasingly less desirable. Today the differences between working, eat-in, and live-in kitchens are no longer a question of class solidarity or the pocketbook, but of individual preferences and the possibility of their actualization in a given overall context.45

40

1 Hans Jürgen Teuteberg, “Von der Hausmutter zur Hausfrau: Küchenarbeit im 18./19. Jahrhundert in der zeitgenössischen Hauswirtschaftsliteratur,” in Die Revolution am Esstisch. Neue Studien zur Nahrungskultur im 19./20. Jahrhundert, ed. Hans Jürgen Teuteberg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004): 101–128; 108. 2 Adelheid von Saldern, “Im Hause, zu Hause: Wohnen im Spannungsfeld von Gegebenheiten und Aneignungen,” in Geschichte des Wohnens, vol. 3, 1800–1918. Das bürgerliche Zeitalter, ed. Jürgen Reulecke (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1997): 145–332; 187. 3 Kirstin Schlegel-Matthies, “Liebe geht durch den Magen: Mahlzeit und Familienglück im Strom der Zeit. Geht die alte Häusliche Tischgemeinschaft zu Ende?” in Teuteberg, Die Revolution am Esstisch, 148–161; 150. 4 Ruth Hanisch and Mechthild Widrich, “Architektur der Küche: Zur Umwertung eines Wirtschaftsraums in der europäischen Architektur des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts,” in Die Küche: Zur Kulturgeschichte eines architektonischen, sozialen und imaginativen Raums, ed. Elfie Miklautz, Herbert Lachmayer, and Reinhard Eisendle (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1999): 17–47; 18. 5 Ibid., 18–19. 6 Von Saldern, “Im Hause, zu Hause,” in Miklautz et al., Die Küche, 184. 7 Schlegel-Matthies, “Liebe geht durch den Magen,” 149. 8 See Sabine Pollak, “Interieurs,” in Architektur & BauForum 32, no. 6 (1999): 124–131; 124. 9 Von Saldern, “Im Hause, zu Hause,” 190. 10 See Hanisch and Widrich, “Architektur der Küche,” 20. 11 Ibid. 12 Elisabeth Leicht-Eckhardt, “Ausstattungsvarianten und Nutzungsformen von Küchen vom achtzehnten Jahrhundert bis heute,” in Miklautz et al., Die Küche, 161–206; 179. 13 See von Saldern, “Im Hause, zu Hause,” 195. 14 Ibid., 204–205. 15 Peter Lesniczak, “Derbe bäuerliche Kost und feine städtische Küche. Zur Verbürgerlichung der Ernährungsgewohnheiten zwischen 1880–1930,” in Teuteberg, Die Revolution am Esstisch, 129–147; 140. 16 Ibid. 17 See Ingeborg Beer, Architektur für den Alltag. Vom sozialen und frauenorientierten Anspruch der Siedlungsarchitektur der zwanziger Jahre (Berlin: Schelzky & Jeep, 1994): 86. 18 Edeltraud Haselsteiner, “Frauenträume – Küchen(t)räume,” Architektur & Bauforum 33, no. 3 (2000): 132–139; 134. 19 Kristiana Hartmann, “Alltagskultur, Alltagsleben, Wohnkultur,” in Geschichte des Wohnens, vol. 4. 1918–1945. Reform – Reakton – Zerstörung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1996): 183–301; 271. 20 See here Günther Uhlig, Kollektivmodell “Einküchenhaus.” Wohnreform und Architekturdebatte zwischen Frauenbewegung und Funktionalismus 1900–1933 (Giessen: Anabas, 1981). 21 Stefan Doernberg, “Das Einküchenhausproblem,” Bauwelt 2, no. 15 (1910): 17. 22 Schlegel-Matthies, “Liebe geht durch den Magen,” 156. 23 See Grete Lihotzky, “Rationalisierung im Haushalt,” Das Neue Frankfurt 1 (1926–1927): 120–123; 120. 24 Bruno Taut, Die neue Wohnung – Die Frau als Schöpferin (Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1924): 10. 25 See for example Erna Meyer, “Wohnungsbau und Hausführung,” Der Baumeister 25, no. 6, supplement (June 1927): B89–B95. In her writings Meyer consistently refers to the economic significance for the state of “the smallest factory,” the household economy, which, having a volume of “almost two thirds of the national wealth, was clearly important for the whole.” 26 Ibid., 89–90. 27 Beer, Architektur für den Alltag, 96. 28 Günter Uhlig, “Die Modernisierung von Raum und Gerät,” in Oikos – Von der Feuerstelle zur Mikrowelle. Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel, ed. Michael Andritzky (Giessen: Anabas, 1992): 93–95; 94. 29 See e.g. Meyer, “Wohnungsbau und Hausführung,” B90. 30 Erna Meyer, “Das Küchenproblem auf der Werkbundausstellung,” Die Form 2, no. 10 (1927): 299–307; 304 ff. 31 Ibid., 300–302. 32 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Warum ich Architektin wurde (Salzburg: Residenz, 2004), 130. On her collaboration with Ernst May, see Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, “Meine Arbeit mit Ernst May in Frankfurt a.M. und Moskau,” Bauwelt 77, no. 28 (1986): 1051–1054.

41

33 Ibid., 128, 131. 34 Huge Häring, “Ausstellung ‘Die Neue Küche’,” Der Baumeister 27, no. 2, supplement (February 1929): B33–B36; B33. 35 Erna Meyer, “Die Elemente des Küchengrundrisses,” in Die praktische Küche, ed. Gewerbemuseum Basel, exhibition catalogue (Basel: Böhm, 1930):16. 36 Briefly, there were in principle were four options for kitchen design: live-in, eat-in, working, or kitchenette. See Beer, Architektur für den Alltag, 116. 37 Gustav Langen, “‘Neues Bauen’. Gedanken auf der Werkbundausstellung ‘Die Wohnung’, Stuttgart, zur Zeit der Tagung für wirtschaftliches Bauen,” Deutsche Bauzeitung 61, no. 88 (2 November 1927): 721–727; 726. 38 See Fedor Roth, Adolf Loos und die Idee des Ökonomischen (Vienna: Deuticke, 1995), 195. 39 See Adolf Loos, “Wohnen lernen,” in Adolf Loos. Sämtliche Schriften in zwei Bänden, ed. Franz Glück, Vol. 1 (Vienna and Munich: Herold, 1962): 383–387. 40 Schütte-Lihotzky, Warum ich Architektin wurde, 100. 41 “Habitation is a human necessity, and it is through it that man will become healthy; a diet of habitation will thus be prescribed for him in precise detail.” (Adolf Behne, “Dammerstock,” Die Form 5, no. 6 (1930): 163–166; 164. 42 See Lore Kramer, “Die Münchner Küche. Grundriss und Lebensform,” in Robert Vorhoelzer – Ein Architektenleben. Die klassische Moderne der Post, ed. Florian Aicher and Uwe Drepper (Munich: Callwey, 1990): 245–249. 43 Gert Kähler, Wohnung und Stadt. Hamburg, Frankfurt, Wien. Modelle sozialen Wohnens in den zwanziger Jahren (Braunschweig and Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1985): 256. 44 Ibid., 75. 45 Peter Faller, Der Wohngrundriss (Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002): 28.

42

Klaus Spechtenhauser

Refrigerators, Kitchen Islands, and Other Cult Objects Kitchens from the Second World War to Today

“For thousands of years, the kitchen hearth was the center of the household; it was the place where everyone sat, thought, and planned, and where the woman of the house was more than just a cook. Certainly, we should not wallow in false romanticism and dream of a return of the ‘cozy hearth.’ But the modern kitchen – with all its technological fittings, its rationally conceived interior design, and all of the advantages of our scientific age – can also be the heart of a dwelling, giving nourishment not just to the body but to the soul and spirit.”1

Resopal and chrome steel: the Kruse 22E fitted kitchen, 1960s. – “Everything about this complete kitchen has been thought through with the active housewife in mind. Not a detail too much or too little.”

Towards the end of the fifties, when these lines were written, the kitchen-space was a site of significant change. The form of the “modern” kitchen was being dictated more and more by the modernization, mechanization, and rationalization of the household and by new materials and the arrival of the “fitted kitchen.” This was accompanied by a fundamental re-evaluation of the role and responsibilities of the housewife. To be sure, she remained the sole ruler of the kitchen realm, but now, after the years of hardship of the Second World War, the provision of the basics of life took on a new emotional aspect. She was the one responsible for providing a pleasant and cozy environment to promote a positive disposition in her husband and children. The rationalization of household chores, reduced to a minimum thanks to new machines and shortened distances, was to create the necessary free time for this, and also for the housewife herself. Looking back now at the guides to good housekeeping from this time, these developments seem to belong to a distant past. They evoke above all the specific aesthetic and taste of the fifties: the first “Resopal” kitchens with their garish colors, massive refrigerators, hors d’oeuvre platters with large helpings of mayonnaise, CocaCola, and sophisticated peas from the can. Nevertheless, in light of the development of the kitchen over the last fifty years – a development which established the “kitchen” as an architectural, social, and imaginative space – it is evident that the opening quotation is relevant beyond its particular time frame in relation to the following crucial factors: • the mechanization, technological upgrading, and, more recently, digitalization of kitchens and household work; • the triumphant progress of the fitted kitchen, which, despite 45

•

•

• •

varying requirements and preferences, became the standard from the sixties onwards; the reduction of the kitchen space to a mono-functional space (modern eat-in kitchen or kitchenette), accompanied by a marked shrinkage of the kitchen area; a deeply rooted awareness that the kitchen is the actual “heart of the dwelling,” performing a wider role than the mere provision of nutrition (modern “eat-in kitchen” or “kitchen/living room”); the desire for a “cozy,” well-designed kitchen space or sphere that increasingly has a showpiece function; finally, and very generally, the altered and highly variable use and individual “utilization” of the kitchen as a result of far-reaching changes in society and the environment (family structure, nutritional customs and others).

Under certain circumstances, frequently dependent on regional traditions and customs, these predominant tendencies become more significant, reflecting the particular mode of existence of every individual together with the prevailing sociological conditions, which are complex and seldom conclusively ascertainable. By no means should the development of the kitchen after the Second World War be viewed as a simple chronological sequence of pioneering occurrences and inventions, which had wide-ranging consequences and, so to speak, exchanged one radical and superlative standard with another.2 Rather, the ever-changing ideas and concepts of what a kitchen can be and what it can be used for coexist. Indeed, it is sufficient to consider the different kitchens of friends, acquaintances, or relatives, or to make a side-trip into another region to appreciate the diverse juxtaposition of varying kitchen spaces, furnishing standards, and customs of use. Continuity and Progress Like many decades that have been rediscovered and correspondingly deformed as a consequence of different stylistic revivals, the fifties from today’s perspective seem distorted and idealized in many ways.3 In most European countries it was an extremely ambivalent time: on the one side, the traumatic experience of National Socialism, abominable persecution, and political repression, along with prevailing poverty and destruction; on the other side, a mood of reawakening, optimism, and hope for a better future. This uncertainty and contradiction manifested itself not only in the way people felt about life but also in the cultures of construction and housing. Where was one to begin? What tools were available? What formative language could lead to the new without constantly reminding one of the old? In the immediate post-war period, the design of the kitchen space fluctuated between continuity and progress, or between “emotive tradition and functional modernity.”4 Thus, the first communal housing development in Vienna, the Per-Albin-Hansson-Settlement West in Vienna 10 (1947–54, Franz Schuster, Eugen Wörle, et al.), adopted not only the conventions of the residential planning of previous decades (e.g. row housing, three-story border structures, ribbon development, free space, social and commercial developments), but also aspects of the traditional design of Viennese residential dwellings from the pre-war period in terms of the relationship 46

The picture of today’s kitchen is shaped by a variety of uses and standards of decoration: 1 Open kitchen/living room in a private house in the Canton of Basel, photograph 2001. 2 While some people watch television in the kitchen . . . 3 . . . others have fun baking together. 4 Kitchens like these can still be found in many places: an ensemble of earthenware sink with cabinet, free-standing electric stove, and overhead and lower cabinets, photograph late 1980s. 5 Kitchen in 1970s style.

47

between the kitchen and the living area. In addition, the kitchens of the housing development in Heiligfeld in Zurich (1947/48, Josef Schütz & Alfred Mürset) were very similar in a practical sense to the designs of the thirties: freely erected kitchen furniture, an electric stove with three burners, a stoneware basin with cold and warm water; the refrigerator was not yet standard equipment. The eastwardfacing kitchens had a direct entrance to the balcony and were enlarged by a relatively generous area of free space, in which the dining/work table was located and which was heated by the tiled stove in the living room. Here, calls for a rationalization of the household and kitchen to cut work loads along the lines of the “Frankfurt Kitchen” went largely unheeded; nevertheless, it was important that the kitchen design was well integrated, appropriately proportioned and suitable for a multifunctional role. At the very start of the fifties, there was an increased effort to move away from the traditional style of kitchen design with individual furnishings, a voluminous counter bench and central kitchen table. This “satisfying formal coherence” was criticized as an “amorphous conglomeration of individual items,” in which individual pieces of equipment and furniture were utilized without regard for their functional interaction.5 Designers now looked to the individual demonstration buildings with their model kitchens and the costly

6–8 Lasting values in kitchens of the immediate post-war period: an ample dining-in kitchen instead of the minimized work kitchen of the Heiligfeld I Municipal Housing Development, Zurich-Wiedikon (1947/48, Josef Schütz and Alfred Mürset): Views of the cooking and dining areas; floor plan of three-room apartment (1:400).

48

9–10 The U.S.-American kitchen as a model of progressive technology and modern sociability: General Electric refrigerator from 1942; kitchen scene from an advertising brochure.

architect-designed kitchens for detached houses built in the interwar period: the integration of furniture items and appliances into a stylish, considered, and coherent whole; the consideration of ergonomic and labor-saving factors; the use of new materials and technological appliances; the increasing adaptation to the available spatial relationships. As had been the case with the first European steps towards rationalization and mechanization, it was the United States that provided the models for technologically progressive households. Here, the technical development immediately before the war had already reached an extremely high standard.6 The concept of the American wonder-kitchen finally reached Europe via magazines, exhibitions, and the weekly show Wochenschau, setting new standards, which were, however, still well behind those of the U.S. with respect to both labor minimization and design. Already at the end of the thirties, kitchens in the U.S. were described as “streamlined,” referring not to their formal exterior in terms of the current “streamlined style” but instead to the overall planning of the kitchen as a complex whole with a logical positioning of appliances, fittings, and work areas. Hence, the term “streamlining” in kitchens did not only refer to a creative molding of the surface form but was also used to refer to an economized, rationalized, and free-flowing style of kitchen labor.7 Comparison with European conditions at the time seemed to confirm this. In Germany in the mid-fifties, it was estimated that, depending on profession, a housewife would spend a combined total of between sixty-three and eighty-six hours per week on household chores and at work. In comparison, an American housewife required an average of forty-nine hours due, naturally, to a “thoroughly rationalized household with mechanized assistance.”8 High time then, for a fundamental revolution of the kitchens of Europe. This had already been occurring for some time in Sweden. Here, ideas for a scientifically planned household flourished, even during wartime. Research institutes undertook detailed studies of household labor, and were soon advocating the employment of sensible kitchen appliances and making recommendations on choice of ground plan and measurements. These developments, termed broadly as “Swedish Kitchens,” found wider appeal outside of Sweden, above all in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland: “In [Swedish Kitchens], ergonomic, efficiency-promoting and social innovations were combined with the typical Scandinavian fondness for simple wooden furniture to achieve a ‘cozy functionalism’.”9 The first trends towards the integration and standardization of furniture and appliances was presented as the “sink combination”: the refrigerator, oven, boiler, and cupboards were integrated beneath a bench top and sink, usually made from rust-resistant steel. Indeed, this arrangement was soon transformed into the “normalized combination,” as, towards the end of the decade, the debate over wide-ranging standardization kitchen elements intensified.10 Rapidly gaining ground were wide-ranging, tailor-made “kitchen combinations” (the first of the fitted kitchens in the post-war period) with integrated stove cooker, refrigerator, and wash trough, low cupboards, wall cupboards, continuous and generously proportioned working and storage space, as well as a cleverly devised cupboard interiors. Thanks to varying sizes and implementation styles, these new kitchens became affordable investments with a rising 49

Combining, standardizing, installing: 11 Sink combination with boiler, refrigerator, and electric stove (1958, Therma). 12 The Therma Norm and later Swiss Kitchen Norm (SINK norm) visualized in an advertisement. 13 Fitted kitchen combination from a kitchen planning book (1958, Franke).

0

2.5

5m

14–16 Apartments on Hohenbühlstrasse, Zurich-Hottingen (1951–53, Max E. Häfeli, Werner M. Moser and Rudolf Steiger): Entryway with kitchenette; floor plan (1:200). – A small, carefully equipped kitchenette with window to an access balcony.

50

prestige value. L-shaped, U-shaped, G-shaped, single-row, and galley kitchen designs began to displace the traditional kitchen compositions. At the same time, kitchens were becoming more colorful, attractive, and user-friendly, due to the utilization of easily adaptable synthetic materials, which increasingly supplemented the more traditional materials of wood, steel, glass, and porcelain. Industrially manufactured and easy to maintain, these materials reduced the costs of manufacturing and fitting out a kitchen, and required less cleaning due to their smooth, seamless surfaces. As the “magic material” (Roland Barthes), plastic enjoyed a reputation as progressive and appeared “to point to a beautiful, colorful future full of surprises.”11 The willingness of large sections of the community to radically change their kitchen and replace it with something completely new, rooted in the spirit of the age, stemmed in part from decreasing scepticism regarding proposed reforms of the household. The appliance and kitchen manufacturers’ marketing mottoes of “functionalism and efficiency” increasingly fell on receptive ears. Those who took pride in their houses modernized their kitchens in accordance with the newest guidelines in order to provide the housekeeper and wife with a pleasant, practically structured, and well situated working area – and this was by no means without an element of obstinacy: “A kitchen should be friendly and inspiring – for these qualities are what produce the good dishes.”12 The “fitted kitchen” as it is known today – a modular construction kit made from standardized appliances and cupboards that are combinable in any number of ways – was preceded by the so-called “unit kitchen.” Poggenpohl already presented such a model (the “form 1000”) at the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1950; it consisted of wall and floor cupboards that could be hung or fitted together in blocks stretching from wall to wall. The main feature of the kitchen unit was its simplicity in combining individual elements according to personal requirements. This represented a considerable step forward from the previous, custom-made fitted kitchens. Today, the difference between fitted kitchens and unit kitchens no longer applies due to increased standardization and norming of kitchen constituents (SMS, DIN e.g. Euro-Norm).

17 Adding on, fitting in, and continuing building for every budget: The Poggenpohl “form 1000” kitchen, presented at the 1950 Cologne Furniture Fair.

The Kitchen Becomes a Machinery Park In the early sixties, there was a surge in sales of kitchen appliances. Together with the fitted kitchen, electrical appliances became “the front line in the technical revolution of the household, the unstoppable progress of which changed the way of living in the fifties and sixties.”13 Admittedly, the great majority of electrical household appliances had already existed since the early twentieth century, but for the average household they were prohibitively expensive and far inferior to later models in terms of efficiency. This, however, changed fundamentally in the post-war period. The appliances became more effective, more portable, and more affordable thanks to increasing mass production. Consequently, their exclusive status declined and they developed into products of mass consumption in all strata of society. In addition, the nature of the products themselves changed: the formerly cumbersome, laboriously operated machines and appliances were now packaged elegantly and rapidly assumed 51

The transformation of the kitchen into a machinery park. Refrigerator, electric or gas stove, and dishwasher remain the basis equipment of every household. 18 Poster of the Usogas Cooperative in Zurich, 1956. 19 Advertisement brochure for Wyss-Purana dishwashers, 1960s. 20 Practically every household has one of these: the toaster. 21 Many might like to have one of these: The Profi Coffee built-in coffee machine (2005, Electrolux). 22 Today’s refrigerator, a.k.a. “Food Center”: The exclusive freestanding model with 522 l net volume (2005, Electrolux).

52

23 “Home sweet home” as a marketing strategy for new technologies (Electrolux poster, 1942).

priority position on the wish lists of progress-conscious housewives. For many, these products imparted an air of the “American way of life.” A commentator of the time mused: “Today, when a wife finds a pink mixer or a new-model vacuum cleaner under the Christmas tree, she is usually very pleased. One can imagine Grandmother’s delight at discovering a wooden spoon or a mop decorated with a ribbon!”14 The first appliance to conquer European kitchens was the refrigerator, followed by the washing machine and electric stove, and later, the deep freezer and all the other household machines and appliances. Of course, the size of the kitchen “machinery park” was dependent on personal preferences, prestige value, and not least, the available budget. However, the refrigerator, washing machine, and electric (or gas) stove became and remain the basic appliances considered essential to the household.15 Towards the end of the fifties, the refrigerator had become a widely adopted kitchen appliance thanks to mass production and massive price reductions. A 1101-Model refrigerator cost 770 deutschmarks in 1952 but only 380 deutschmarks in 1957: a price reduction of around fifty per cent in less than five years.16 A full fridge rapidly became the symbol of a progressive way of life and a modern mode of household management by the enlightened housewife. In an Bauknecht advertisement from 1959 we read: “There shines a bright-red wine jelly, and over there sit some balls of anchovy butter next to the iced fruit salad. The rest of the lovely lemon cream can wait quietly until morning. It will still be deliciously fresh. But the empty corner to the right entices most of all, simply because it is empty and therefore must be filled. Our beautiful Bauknecht ought to be completely stocked.”17 The new and most voluminous appliance would be presented proudly to friends, relatives, and unexpected guests. From now on they could be given adequate refreshment because the cooled ingredients would be promptly made into a small “cool plate” or some canapés, as we all know from the colortinted black-and-white photographs from cookbooks of the time. These “morsels” – today frequently replaced by potato crisps, salty snacks (“party mix”), or olives – were considered sophisticated and, to a certain extent, vouched for the good form of the housewife. Likewise, drinks cooled with ice cubes became a much admired novelty. The mid-sixties saw the arrival of box deep freezers. Previously, expensive methods for deep freezing food were used only in the military, but now deep frozen food products found their way via public freezing plants and frozen food chains into these new household appliances. In the early stages, food was frozen for storage in the enlarged freezer boxes of refrigerators, but the increased availability and popularity of pre-prepared food products required the manufacture of a dedicated appliance capable of producing arcticlike temperatures. Today, around seventy per cent of households in central Europe have such an appliance. With new possibilities for cooling and freezing within the household, the way in which families stored and consumed goods changed fundamentally. Refrigerators and freezers increasingly became the “larders of our time,”18 and pantries and cellars were used less and less for food storage. What previously one had needed to buy every day could now be purchased easily on the weekly shop53

24 A full refrigerator – something the whole family can be proud of (Forster brochure, 1960s). 25 The calling card of the modern housewife: sophisticated hors d’oeuvres.

ping trip. Consumers were also now prepared to travel longer distance: the increased mobility provided by private cars guaranteed trouble-free access to new self-service shops and, later, to supermarkets – the veritable “strongholds of freezing technology”19 – which sprang up on the margins of cities and contributed to a decline in food retail business in residential areas. In contrast to the traditional bakeries, butcher’s shops, grocery outlets, and fruit and vegetable sellers, with their focus on specific ranges of foods, these new supermarkets, with their previously unimaginable range of food articles, must have appeared like the consumer land of milk and honey.20 Shopping, however, lost its element of communication, i. e. exactly that quality we appreciate today when we visit an alimentari shop in an Italian provincial city, stocked to the ceiling with products and run by a shopkeeper who explains the differences between distinctive varieties of pasta. “The individual service and purchasing negotiations between the housewife and the butcher, fishmonger, and fruit or vegetable seller were replaced by the general purchase of packages standardized by weight and type . . ..”21 The packaging itself now had to replace the vendor and advertise and extol the goods, which were displayed in expanses of cooling units and wall shelves. A careful balance between covering and displaying the packaged contents became an important design element, complementing the desires of the shopper and motivating a purchase. With the increasing availability of convenience-products of each and every variety, traditional methods of conserving foods (e.g. bottling, preserving, pickling, smoking) began to die out.22 For housewives and other kitchen managers, the making of jams and syrups became an almost insurmountable hurdle, and consumers came to rely on finished products, whether with preservatives added or manufactured according to the Demeter standard: 54

26–27 New refrigeration and freezing possibilities have had a decisive impact on storage and consumption practices.

“The responsibility for one’s own nutrition was passed on, and cooking degenerated into following the preparatory instructions printed on the package. Creamed spinach and pizza were differentiated only by their thawing and cooking times. Groceries turned into standardized branded products with homogeneous quality guaranteed.”23 And what of the kitchen as a space? As Otl Aicher put it, it mutated into a “branch of the food industry.” It seems that artificial coldness had a decisive influence on consumer sensitivity regarding quality, seasonal availability, and actual taste. Everything disappeared into the refrigerator – even berries, bananas, and melons – or was deep-frozen and used later as preference dictated. We read in an advertisement for a deep freezer from 1966: “Instead of seven errands per week, now two are enough. You can also prepare and store additional meals at the same time, and be ready for unexpected visitors. And that’s not all. You’ll also get a completely different feeling – a feeling of independence from shopping lists and seasons. Because summer fruits can now be enjoyed in winter, too, thanks to the deep freezer.”24 Following the widespread purchase of electric washing machines in the sixties, many other electrical appliances conquered the household with varying degrees of success, changing it into a virtual machinery park: vacuum cleaners, irons, electric razors, drills, televisions, radios, record players, answering machines; and in the kitchen: blenders, egg cookers, juicers, toasters, coffee machines, bread slicers, waffle irons, deep fryers, and electric can openers. On average, there are around thirty types of electrical appliance in every household today, helping to make life more enjoyable. The microwave oven, which found a place in many households from the eighties onwards, also had a crucial influence on eating habits and the way food was prepared. It arrived at a particularly convenient time, coinciding with the declining significance of the family dining 55

28–29 “Self-service saves time”: In the 1950s, the first self-service stores were opened, where one could shop without being disturbed by salespersons. Refrigerated and deep-frozen products soon made up an important part of the offerings in these new temples of consumption.

30 A common sight in kitchens since the 1980s: the microwave.

community. Now, it was even easier simply to reach into the deep freezer. Individual “menus” replaced the monotone character of the family meal and made it unnecessary to sit around the table together. The fitted Kitchen as a Standard The conversion of the kitchen into an arsenal of kitchen machines and appliances was accompanied by the widespread construction of fitted kitchens. Architects and planners, and appliance and kitchen manufacturers promoted these kitchens as the ideal model. In trade and lifestyle magazines, such as Schöner Wohnen and Ideales Heim, the fitted kitchen was presented in idealized form and as essential to the modern and rationally managed household. Now only a fitted kitchen could be a “dream kitchen,” and consumers responded accordingly. This situation has remained largely unchanged, despite varying utilization preferences, efforts to change design, and adaptations to ground plans. Like a car, television, mobile telephone, or summer holidays at the seaside, it seems today that a fitted kitchen, “in which the stove, oven, dishwasher, and refrigerator can be integrated into the overall design, is a basic, indispensable requirement.”25 In western Germany in the midnineties, fifty per cent of households had a fully fitted kitchen, while a further twenty-four per cent had at least some elements of a fitted kitchen.26 There were a number of important factors that aided the spread of fitted kitchens, one of which was the positive connotations people attached to the ideas of “modern,” “new,” and “advanced” associated with this type of design. Then there was the tempting promise of easing and minimizing household chores by fitting out kitchens in accordance with ergonomic guidelines and principles of rational labor management – a promise that, over the long term, turned out to be false. It has long been recognized that the increased mechanization of household chores has had little impact for the housewife: “Although they have changed the home, they have not brought housewives increased freedom from household drudgery in any tangible way. Research on time budgeting has raised the question as to whether technology has led to greater flexibility in housework or to its intensification.”27 Rephrased more generally: “At the time when it was closest to being achievable, i. e. the fifties 56

31–32 Out of the can and onto the plate: Finished products and convenience food have increasingly defined how we eat (following double page spread).

and sixties, the euphoria of more leisure time as the result of progress collapsed.”28 Moreover, in the sixties, people increasingly had problems finding space for all their kitchen appliances: “The challenge of the next few years lay in more effectively arranging the kitchen machinery plant, coordinating the kitchen and its appliances and harmonizing form and function.”29 Put more simply: How could as many appliances as possible take up as little space as possible while remaining easy to use? The answer lay in an increasing standardization of appliances and furniture to enable combination and exchange. In western Germany, these changes were made by the industry itself; in East Germany, the responsibility was assumed by the state. Whether using the SINK-, DIN-, or later EURO-norm, the priority was to create a user-friendly system of measurement in order to improve coordination among manufacturers, planners, and interior designers. As a consequence of this development many appliance manufacturers soon began to offer complete kitchen solutions: standardized assembly-line kitchens for the assembly-line work in the home. At the same time, manufacturers argued that “fears of the uniform kitchen” were groundless since “whoever visits a kitchen factory or display room will recognize that such a beautiful and diverse range of kitchens has never before been available.”30 Clearly, however, the reality was somewhat different. As a result of the mass construction of dwellings in the sixties, the desire to experiment was limited. While movable structures, flowing spatial transitions, and rooms tailor-made for “new moderns” were once distinguishing features of the modern architectural movement, this trend now became mired by the unimaginative schematic solutions and guidelines of the construction industry. The ground plans in East and West were “completely rationalized” and built on mass. The stereotypical development and precise organization of uniform living rooms left practically no recreational areas for more flexible use in response to the changing needs of residents. The kitchen space demonstrated this emphatically: usually combined in the ground plan with the bathroom/wc to form an inflexible wet-cell block, the kitchen area was steadily reduced in size and rapidly converted into a kitchenette (seldom larger than 20–26 sq. ft.) of a size that went “beyond requirements dictated by construction costs, the need to save space, and emergency construction measures.”31 This questionable mono-functionalism transformed kitchens ever more frequently into sober, unimaginatively equipped, uninspiring utility spaces. The use of white ensured a homogeneous appearance; “natural” materials were increasingly replaced by chipboard veneer and a wide range of plastics. Spatial flexibility was reduced to the replacement of a refrigerator or stove within the standardized kitchen combination. The personnel operating the kitchen also remained unchanged: only one person – usually female – could work in this minimal kitchen space. Consequently, the kitchen household, once a widely branching, spacious network within the own four walls, was transformed into a sterile and impersonal kitchen cell, adequate for the preparation of frozen spinach and canned ravioli. In the wake of unbridled optimism and belief in progress, rationalization and industrialization had demonstrated their negative consequences more swiftly than expected. 57

33–35 The fitted kitchen of the 1980s: Comfortable, scuffproof, and easy to clean . . .

36 When the model is more convincing than what it is meant to resemble: toy kitchen from the 1970s.

37 A minimal work kitchen in a housing block, combined with the bath and wc in order to save building costs: Housing development in Adlikon–Regensdorf, Switzerland (1968–73, Ernst Gühner AG, Steiger Architekten und Planer, Walter M. Förderer): floor plan, upper floor (1:200).

Functional, Colorful, and Mobile: Kitchen Visions During the building boom, criticism of the negative consequences of unrestrained construction increased. As early as 1958, Friedensreich Hundertwasser stated in his famous Verschimmelungsmanifest gegen den Rationalismus in der Architektur [Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture]: “We must at last put a stop to having people move in their quarters like chickens and rabbits in their coops.”32 Increasingly sterile, monotonous, and “inhospitable,”33 architectural and residential landscapes were frequently denounced for following the principles of “functional design,” often simply serving building-industry interests and ignoring people’s emotional and socio-psychological needs. More critically focused architects, planners, thinkers, and designers quickly adopted the new slogans of flexibility, mobility, and variability, which were to lead the way out of the “crisis of functionalism.” Parallel to events in the socio-political sphere, the time appeared ripe for new experimental ideas and hypotheses that radically questioned the doctrine of functional design. New architectural visions involved adjustable and interchangeable structures and constructions, mobile architecture, labyrinths of biomorphic forms, floating towns comprising spaceship-like bodies, blow-up room furnishings, and even houses that could be carried from place to place in a rucksack. Examples include the early works of Coop 60

Himmelb(l)au, Haus-Rucker GmbH, Hans Hollein and Walter Pichler, the city utopias of Archigram, and the designs by the Japanese Metabolists. Admittedly, practically all these projects remained unrealized visions, but they were not unimportant for the further development of architecture. The widely promoted variability of spatial units was manifested in the late sixties in the form of new, more flexible ground plans, and the willingness of some construction companies to offer residents a say in the design of their apartments. This new experimental focus on the design and use of dwellings, ground plans, and furnishings was also directed at the kitchen space. Visionary designers worked on the design of new cooking facilities that were no longer restricted to a specific kitchen space but could be set up as self-contained, room units in any part in the home. Examples include the Kugelküche or sphere kitchen (1969/70), which was designed by Luigi Colani for Poggenpohl and presented as “experiment 70” at the Cologne Furniture Fair, the Elektra-Technovision (1968–70) by Hasso Gehrmann, and the Softmobil kitchen concept developed by Coop Himmelb(l)au for EWE from 1974 onwards. At the time, Colani’s vision of a residential environment was based on the idea that bathroom and kitchen should be grouped together as a “functional cell” around a central living area. Although such concepts might have radically questioned previous ideas of residential space, the fact remains that the round kitchen did not contain much that was innovative, apart from its formal characteristics, which recall a spaceship capsule and which have once again become popular. The biomorphic forms and loud colors of the sphere, which has a diameter of 7.8 ft., tend to obscure the fact that this model represents a continuation of the housewife’s isolation from the rest of the dwelling: the kitchen as a hermetic “food preparation unit,” in which the woman accomplishes all of the kitchen work with the touch of a button and communicates with the rest of the apartment via monitors and microphones. Her function as “nurturing mother” is emphatically confirmed by the “serving hatch leading out of the uterus-like inner world,” which allows her to supply food guaranteeing survival in the world outside.34 Gehrmann’s Technovision was also based on the notion of a central working area in which all activities were carried out. The explanatory material of the time states that the woman “no longer goes to the individual appliances; the appliances come to her.” Following selection of a recipe on the monitor of the control desk, the corresponding appliances and shelves would move into place at the touch of a button or pedal. All relevant appliances – whether an egg cooker, slicer, infrared grill, toaster, dishwasher, garbage disposal unit, refrigerator, or pantry – would wait until called up by the control desk either in the body of the kitchen apparatus or in laterally located, rotating cylinders. The most salient feature distinguishing the Technovision, “the world’s first fully automated kitchen,”35 from Colani’s sphere was the former’s pragmatic openness and active role as a room divider. It was a component of Gehrmann’s 1965 Total Living project, which was aimed at creating an “intelligent” living environment with interconnected, electronic screens and control desks. Living areas were to be constructed out of mobile spaces that could be used flexibly, rather than a rigid honeycomb of rooms.36 The belief that 61

industrial design need not be confined to the design of fashionable tools and appliances but should also manifest their synergy and system has not lost any of its relevance today. The work of Colani, Gehrmann, and other visionary kitchen designers of the sixties, with their exuberant enthusiasm for technology and lively forms, is also linked by the idea of using freely arrangable designs within a living area conceived as a whole. This idea

38 The woman in the kitchen-capsule: The “experiment 70” sphere kitchen (1969/70, Luigi Colani for Poggenpohl).

was also the basis for Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Softmobil from 1974 onwards. Kitchens and working and living areas were to be brought into close proximity again. Cooking, at least theoretically, was reevaluated: it was no longer to be seen as an obligatory task (for women) but as an enjoyable and above all communicative activity (suitable also for men). Back to the Kitchen/Living Room Although the “world of men” began to impinge on the female territory of the kitchen (men as users, not designers), it would be somewhat daring to assert that the very nature of the minimalist working kitchen was called into question. But the fact remains that at the end of the seventies, the well equipped but very small kitchenette came up against ever more frequent opposition. Even foldable tables and benches used for eating breakfast or small snacks were labelled unsatisfactory. Breakfast meals such as muesli, slices of fruit, or a small, seasonal salad placed further pressure on such minimized eating surfaces. Furthermore, the preparation of these meals required more space, space that had been “rationalized away” in the past few decades. The lack of coziness and a sense of well-being in the kitchen was ultimately traced back to the cold, sterile atmosphere of dull fitted kitchen combinations with their artificial materials. 62

39 Since 1974, beginning with Softmobil, the Austrian kitchen manufacturer EWE has worked together with Coop Himmelb(l)au. With the Mal-Zeit kitchen (1987), the architects created a heavily awarded design object for trendsetters. The arrangement does, however, seem better suited for staging a single meal rather than feeding the average family.

40 Elektra-Technovision: “The first fully automated kitchen for the world” (1968– 70, Hasso Gehrmann for Elektra Bregenz, following double-page spread).

Since the size of the kitchens could only be modified with difficulty, the first corrective adjustments to the standard fitted kitchen were of an aesthetic nature. The compact units were opened up, creating areas that could contain shelves and display cases for all types of kitchen utensils and personal knickknacks. Hygienic white was increasingly replaced by color, and there was a steady increase in the popularity of “rustic” kitchen panelling with wood veneer, and profiled wood and tiling, which aimed to supplement functional modernity with the “coziness” of earlier living rooms and eat-in kitchens – an aspiration which led to rather dubious results. Thus a period began in which the kitchen was no longer seen in terms of “covering up” primary needs but in terms of luxury – as stressed in the essay in this volume by Gert Kähler – whereby factors such as emotionality, style, and taste became increasingly important. It was a man who recognized the sign of the times and provided an important impulse for a general rethinking of the kitchen: Otl Aicher’s book Die Küche zum Kochen [The Kitchen for Cooking] appeared in 1982.37 In place of routine preparation of food in a cell-like working kitchen with the aid of numerous pre-prepared products, Aicher advocated cooking and eating as a communal and communicative experience. Aicher, himself a passionate cook and gourmet, saw incompetent kitchen planning as the greatest problem: “Designers who do not cook should not be allowed near the kitchen”38 The central tenets of the new “kitchen philosophy” were the connection of the kitchen with the living room, the integration of elements from the restaurant sphere, and the revitalization of the central kitchen area, through the use of a classic kitchen table and, in particular, an island work area. The kitchen manufacturer Bulthaup, which contracted Aicher’s study, responded by bringing such a kitchen work-bench on the market in 1984. Since then, it has become the firm’s brand symbol and has given the general name “kitchen island” to the various types and models on the modern market. In effect, the kitchen island is little more than a new interpretation of the voluminous, free-standing cooking apparatuses that were prevalent in upper-middle class kitchens of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Aicher’s book focused the dissatisfaction of kitchen users. Once again, the eat-in kitchen appeared to be a real alternative to the small kitchenette. The average citizen now wanted a return to the kind of arrangement common in communal flats: the kitchen as a central meeting point for home life and as a recreational room for diverse activities, provided this was possible within the confines of the kitchen’s ground plan. Today, half of all kitchens in Germany measure less than 32 sq. ft., and only fourteen per cent are larger than 50 sq. ft. Nevertheless, it is notable that the type of kitchen that was more than a dedicated cooking and working space had never completely died out – certainly not in rural areas and not in large, older apartments. Moreover, the prevalence of eat-in kitchens had nothing to do with socio-economic status, as confirmed by Josef Frank, a distinguished modernist par excellence: “And we know that the majority of civilized humanity lives in the kitchen, not in a kitchenette but in a so-called eat-in kitchen.”39 New buildings did not necessarily opt for the functional kitchenette, and not all kitchen mechanization was seen as a positive thing. As early as 63

41 Camouflaged with traditional materials and formal borrowings in the “country house style”: Only one of the numerous attempts to make the monotone fitted kitchen more home-like.

1957, kitchens overloaded with electrical appliances were criticized as the “result of highly effective sales methods,” and the “disquiet and unease” in the home were attributed to the separation of the living room and kitchen. It was argued that this arrangement should be replaced by a “studio kitchen,” which was open to the living space and was more of a “homely working center” than an “isolated machine.”40 It would be wrong to describe Aicher’s Die Küche zum Kochen [The Kitchen for Cooking] as the absolute starting point for a kitchen revolution. Rather, planners, builders, and appliance and kitchen manufacturers geared their products and services better towards market requirements and aimed to provide a solution to as many different consumer desires as possible. Moreover, Aicher’s plea for more communication, fun, and sensory delight in cooking and eating had little to do with social reality. Although his request seemed to strike a chord, the actual drivers of change were somewhat different. As ever, it was women, now even more burdened than before, who were responsible for the daily provision of food. In this respect, little has changed today. Seasonal ingredients, market-fresh goods, or the involvement of the sense in preparing food remain low priorities for most, representing more often a preoccupation of sophisticated and extravagant male hobby chefs, cooking on the weekends or for important guests. Characteristically, the following comment could only come from a man: “Really good chefs, male and female, work intensively by hand and require relatively little technical equipment. The most important things are a sharp knife and a wooden cutting board, a few good pots, and a hot flame.”41 Design Kitchens as Showpieces In the eighties, awareness and sensitivity towards the kitchen space grew steadily, regardless of existing spatial conditions, types of utilization, or financial resources. More and more “design pieces” and high-tech appliances from the professional sphere found a place in the kitchen. Aluminium and chrome became trend-setters, and appliances such as dishwashers and microwave ovens (German household saturation figures for each in 2003: fifty-seven and sixty-three per cent respectively) were seen as representing another 66

42 Island workplace designed following Otl Aicher in a private house near Zurich, photograph 2005.

43 Even when the 26 sq.-ft. work kitchen was at its most popular, there were open kitchens connected directly to the dining or living areas, photograph 1965.

step towards the labor-free kitchen. Thus the lavishly equipped kitchen increasingly gained in prestige and is regarded today as an indicator of a contemporary form of living, in much the same way that the first refrigerators were in the fifties. Induction ovens, LCD screens, and wine-tasting shelves are proudly shown to interested guests – more often by the men, who have discovered the kitchen as a new place of self-fulfilment. In contrast, the housewife and family cook has become a rare species since daily nutrition is increasingly acquired away from the home: eating in the canteen, refectory, or diner; eating while travelling in trains or from street stalls or in the corner fast-food store. Everyday dining is increasingly becoming a minor activity located outside the home, and cooking at home is becoming an infrequent leisure-time activity. At best, the family comes together for an evening meal, provided the television in the living room does not prove too enticing – along with the potato chips, salty snacks, cans of beer, and take-away kebab. Today, we frequently experience an extremely paradoxical situation in our kitchens. On the one hand, kitchens are now “creative centers” equipped with highly technically advanced refinements; while on the other hand, no one really cooks in them anymore, or at least very seldom. Nevertheless, modern kitchens must be “allrounders” more than ever before, because different people with different cooking and eating preferences now use them at different times of the day: “ambitious, duty-conscious, creative, fast, and critical cooks contrast with ecologically conscious, carefree, indifferent, or convenience-oriented eaters. Thus, depending on who is cooking and when, the same kitchen can produce food that is simple, quick, pre-prepared, environmentally conscious, healthy, or hearty comfort food.”42 Ultimately the increasing aestheticization and formalization of

67

the kitchen reflects a social continuity. Whether upper class “salons” or lower class parlors, there have always been rooms that “are more for show than for use.”43 Happy Coexistence At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the kitchen is such a highly complex space with respect to its use and equipment that it is difficult to form a uniform image of it. The kitchenettes and eatin kitchens in both old and new buildings are too different, as are the levels of financial investment, the types of use, design tastes, and levels of importance attached to kitchens by their owners and users. Apart from certain standardized equipment to be found in every kitchen, the much proclaimed “brave new kitchen” manifests itself as a heterogeneous construct of functional demands and homely-aesthetic requirements. Important trends, however, include an increased merging of kitchen and living areas as well as a re-evaluation of the kitchen as a representative prestige object. These trends stem almost certainly from the conception of dining and cooking as a culturally significant (recreational) experience – an increasingly important event in our post-industrialized, recreational society. In the final analysis, however, it does not matter what type of kitchen we have within our four walls – whether it is a kitchenette,

The prestigious “designer kitchen.” 52–53 The “Idea” and “Bludream” kitchens (2000, Snaidero).

69

contains a dining table, or is directly linked to the living area – nor is it important which appliances or digital devices are at our disposal. Far more critical is the fact that cooking actually takes place in the kitchen – with passion and heart-felt enjoyment – and is not reduced to “event cooking” or the provision of nutrition without regard for quality or quantity. Certainly, this can demand more time but it need not do so. Wonderful meals can be created, despite a restricted time budget and simple ingredients. In any case, we can be hopeful that the ability to produce “real” meals – e.g. high-quality goulash, tender schnitzel, fresh salad with lots of colorful ingredients, hot Thai curry, sirloin with morel cream sauce, herb-filled tomatoes and rosemary-baked potatoes, a perfectly layered lasagna or salmon stuffed with mushrooms, herbs and plenty of garlic (the author admits some bias) – is not lost completely and left entirely to the professionals of the gastronomic scene.

54 A roomy kitchen-living-dining room with direct access to the garden.

1 A. A., “Küchentypen. Eine Analyse,” Das Wohnen 34, no. 8 (1959): 252–255; 255. 2 Two publications in particular provide an overview: Michael Andritzky, ed., Oikos – Von der Feuerstelle zur Mikrowelle: Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel (Gießen: Anabas, 1992), and Elfie Miklautz, Herbert Lachmayer, and Reinhard Eisendle, eds., Die Küche: Zur Kulturgeschichte eines architektonischen, sozialen und imaginativen Raums (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1999). See also the select bibliography at the end of this volume. 3 See Michael Andritzky, ”Balance zwischen Heim und Welt: Wohnweisen und Lebensstile von 1945 bis heute,” in Geschichte des Wohnens, vol. 5: Von 1945 bis heute. Aufbau – Neubau – Umbau, ed. Ingeborg Flagge (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999): 615–686; esp. 626 ff. 4 Margret Tränkle, “Neue Wohnhorizonte. Wohnalltag und Haushalt nach 1945 in der Bundesrepublik,” in Flagge, Geschichte des Wohnens, 687–806; 722. 5 Hans Hilfiker, Apparateindustrie und Küchenbau. Nach einem Referat von Dipl. Ing. H. Hilfiker, Schwanden, an der Jahrestagung des CECED, Conseil Européen de la construction électro-domestique, vom 27. Juni 1967 in Montreux, (Schwanden, Switzerland: Therma AG, n.d.), 5–6. 6 See Sigfried Giedion’s landmark work Mechanization Takes Command. A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948). First published in German in 1982. 7 See Brigitte Selden, “Die Stromlinienform im Haushalt,” in Stromlinienform, exhibition catalogue, ed. Claude Lichtenstein and Franz Engeler (Zurich and Baden: Museum für Gestaltung Zürich and Lars Müller, 1992): 121–127. 8 Kaethe Lübbert-Griese et al., Die moderne Küche (Hildesheim and Darmstadt: Werkhof – Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die moderne Küche e.V., 1956): 11–12. 9 Ruth Hanisch and Mechthild Widrich, “Architektur der Küche. Zur Umwertung eines Wirtschaftsraums in der europäischen Architektur des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts,” in Die Küche: Zur Kulturgeschichte eines architektonischen, sozialen und imaginativen Raums, ed. Elfie Miklautz, Herbert Lachmayer, and Reinhard Eisendle (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1999): 17–47; 35. 10 See the essay by Christina Sonderegger in this volume. 11 Alexandra Binnenkade, “‘Eine Küche soll freundlich und inspirierend sein. Daraus entstehen die guten Menüs’ Werbung und Widerstand zum Thema der Einbauküche,” in: Perlon, Petticoats und Pestizide: Mensch-Umwelt-Beziehung in der Region Basel der 50er Jahre, ed. Arne Andersen (Basel and Berlin: Reinhardt, 1994): 150–153; 151.

71

12 The motto of the essay by Alexandra Binnenkade comes from “Was Basler Frauen von ihrer Küche halten. Eine Umfrage des Basler Frauenvereins, ausgewertet von Karl Wunderle,” Wirtschaft und Verwaltung 22 (1963): 7–38; 36. 13 Tränkle, “Neue Wohnhorizonte,” 749. 14 Janet L. Wolff, Kaufen Frauen mit Verstand? Ein Leitfaden zum Verständnis der Frau von heute und zur Beeinflussung ihrer Kaufwünsche (Düsseldorf: Econ, 1959): 183. 15 Today, practically every household has a refrigerator; over ninety per cent have their own washing machine and an electric or gas stove. See Alphons Silbermann, Die Küche im Wohnerlebnis der Deutschen. Eine soziologische Studie (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1995): 83–85. 16 Ullrich Hellmann, Künstliche Kälte: Die Geschichte der Kühlung im Haushalt, Werkbund-Archiv, vol. 21 (Giessen: Anabas, 1990): 240. 17 Cited in Arne Andersen, Der Traum vom guten Leben. Alltags- und Konsumgeschichte vom Wirtschaftswunder bis heute (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1999): 96. 18 Tränkle, “Neue Wohnhorizonte,” 751. 19 Hellmann, Künstliche Kälte, 261. 20 On developments in Switzerland, see Philipp Gysin and Thomas Poppenwimmer, “Die Geburt der Selbstbedienung in der Schweiz oder die Rationalizierung des Verkaufs,” in Andersen, Perlon, Petticoats und Pestizide, 154–156. 21 From an early critique of the consequences of the self-service shop in the United States, quoted in Hellmann, Künstliche Kälte, 263. 22 See Eva Stille, “In Keller und Kammer: Vorratswirtschaft früher,” in Andritzky, Oikos, 215–226. 23 Hellmann, Künstliche Kälte, 263. 24 Electrolux advertisement for deep freezers, using the slogan “What does your leisure time have to do with deep freezing?,” Interieur 12, no. 4 (1966). 25 Tränkle, “Neue Wohnhorizonte,” 755. 26 Silbermann, Die Küche im Wohnerlebnis der Deutschen, 66. 27 Judy Wajcman, Technik und Geschlecht: Die feministische Technikdebatte (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1994), 136; originally published as Feminism Confronts Technology (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991). More on this subject can be found in the essay by Marion von Osten. 28 Binnenkade, “‘Eine Küche soll freundlich und inspirierend sein’,” 153. 29 Rita Mielke, Die Küche. Geschichte, Kultur, Design (Berlin: Feierabend: 2004): 24. 30 [Editor], “Die moderne Küche: das ‘Cockpit’ der Wohnung,” Das Wohnen 48, no. 11 (November 1973): 311. 31 Tränkle, “Neue Wohnhorizonte,” 758. 32 Quoted in Ulrich Conrad, Programme und Manifeste zur Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts, Bauwelt Fundamente, vol. 1 (Braunschweig and Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1981): 149–152; 149. 33 Sociologists were among the most radical critics of architecture and urban planning. See e.g. Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte: Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1965). 34 Hanisch and Widrich, “Architektur der Küche,” 38–39. 35 Pamphlet from Elektra Bregenz, 1971. 36 Hasso Gehrmann, “Biologik und absolute Relativität,” typescript, 2004. 37 Otl Aicher, Die Küche zum Kochen. Das Ende einer Architekturdoktrin (Munich: Callwey, 1982). See also: Michael Andritzky, “Gemeinsam statt einsam: Otl Aicher und die Küchenphilosophie von bulthaup,” in Andritzky, Oikos, 136–138. – Otl Aicher (1922–1991), Graphic artist, designer, and author, co-founder and, from 1962 to 1964, Rector of the Academy of Design in Ulm. In 1972 he became renowned for his pictograms for the Olympic Games in Munich. His work in creating the design image of companies like Braun, Lufthansa, and ZDF has been no less groundbreaking. 38 Aicher, Die Küche zum Kochen, 6. 39 Josef Frank, “Der Volkswohnungspalast: eine Rede, anlässlich der Grundsteinlegung, die nicht gehalten wurde,” Der Aufbau 1, no. 7 (August 1926): 107–111; 109. 40 H[ans] Biäsch, “Wie verschönern wir die Arbeit der Hausfrau?,” Bauen + Wohnen 11, no. 1 (January 1957): 29–30. 41 Helmut Krauch, “Die Küche der 70er Jahre,” in Andritzky, Oikos, 133–135; 133. 42 Elisabeth Leicht-Eckhardt, “Ausstattungsvarianten und Nutzungsformen von Küchen vom achtzehnten Jahrhundert bis heute,” in Miklautz, et al., Die Küche, 161–206; 200. 43 Tränkle, “Neue Wohnhorizonte,” 765.

72

74

Gert Kähler

The Kitchen Today. And a Little Bit Yesterday. And Tomorrow, Too, Of Course. On Kitchen Styles and Lifestyles

A well-known writer in his field drives his daughter off to her university, and finds himself telling her friends – while sitting around the table at the local Italian place – how he’d given her a hand-made cookbook containing their mutual favorite recipes, to accompany her on her life’s path. Reaction: amazement all around. Not so much because the man could cook. But to have all your favorite recipes compiled as a personal cookbook: Wow!!! The writer, however, began to brood: what was so remarkable, possibly even strange, about that? That he was encouraging his daughter to cook? That you need to learn how to do something in order to do it well? That he had little confidence in the student dining hall? That here was a worried father afraid his daughter might fall prey to bulimia or its opposite? Whatever they might have been thinking, the real reason for his giving his daughter the cookbook was something different: he simply did not want to let the old recipes die out. Apparently, the moral goes, the world of the hearth and home and children still has the power to surprise and amaze, despite the fact that relevant magazines have already written the book on better living and eating, and always under the banner of the newest trends. Which has produced a strange kind of ignorance. The newest trend happens roughly once a year; kitchens themselves are designed for twenty years. Which means that only one in every twenty occupants in Germany works in a modern kitchen, and the other nineteen, by contrast, are left to their own devices in unmodern ones. The embittered housewife stands over her pots on the stove, stirring their contents half-heartedly because she’s been banned from modernity ... Or else it doesn’t matter to her because even after a year she still hasn’t gotten used to most of today’s appliances – which would suggest that perhaps she doesn’t really need them ...?

“Pig’s head” (in the kitchen of Swiss artist Werner Luginbühl), Mötschwil, 1969. – The kitchen as a central human experience, regardless of age, cooking talent, furnishings, or menu.

More Kitchen Doesn’t Necessarily Mean More Cooking The kitchen has always been a central experiential space for humans, whether gathered around the fire in a stone-age cave, gnawing chunks of meat off the bone, or grilling the ribs in a modern, multifunctional oven. On the other hand, according to the website of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die Moderne Küche [The Modern Kitchen Association], “the kitchen has long ceased to be merely a place for nutritional preparation. It is a site of encounter and communication.”1 75

The author of that sentence, written in 2004, is an optimist. The kitchen as a site of encounter and communication – that presumes not only that men and women speak to each other, but that they do so in the kitchen. Both notions are open to dispute. On the other hand, the anonymous author is also a closet pessimist. He talks of the kitchen not as a site for cooking, but for “nutritional preparation” – a term that like “satiation supplement”

Despite the expensive technological furniture of today’s kitchens, “real” cooking is increasingly becoming a leisure-time activity, a special event. Does anyone still follow the “nutritional preparation” routine of cooking during the week using all four burners? 1 Woman cooking, 1977. 2–3 Luxuriously furnished kitchens in the high price range, 2002/03.

76

comes straight out of the good old days of the German Democratic Republic. It leaves open the question whether this “preparation” simply means unpeeling the plastic off a frozen pizza or slipping a TV dinner into a microwave, or actually cooking a side of roast beef with the aid of red wine, currant jelly, and cream, and serving it along with mashed potatoes (real potatoes actually peeled and mashed!) and a side of hand-sliced (!) green beans sautéed in butter and summer savory. The vague phrasing of “nutritional supplement” suggests bad experiences. Not necessarily cooking, but communicating – examining this jumble of ideas, we can just begin to make out what a typical kitchen of today is. It is more than the sum of its appliances and functions, which was assumed for the “Frankfurt Kitchen” of the twenties, the epitome of the “functional kitchen.” In fact, its functionality was all show; the kitchen itself was miles away from the real thing, as was amply demonstrated at the time in an extensive study.2 Today’s kitchen has a considerably higher range of appliances than before, but it is far less suited to its original purpose, i. e. cooking. It may in fact be geared more for anticipated communication, even if not necessarily between men and women. As everyone knows, at parties everyone ends up sooner or later in the kitchen. Along with all the new appliances and additional space comes an increase in pre- or partly prepared foods that in fact interfere with the kitchen’s real purpose: cooking. The appliances make cooking more convenient, and the space makes it even more fun – which may be why hardly anyone does it anymore. Most people have two different modes of behavior: whipping up quick meals during the week and using expensive cookbooks and gadgets for their nutritional preparation on the weekends. An odd phenomenon indeed, one worth looking at more closely. Gauging the Bandwidth I’ll begin by examining our object of desire, the contemporary kitchen, in terms of two prototypes that could not be more different from each other. On the one side of the spectrum we have the “traditional-romantic” kitchen, which is particularly nicely illustrated by Christopher Alexander in his A Pattern Language:

“Think a lot about yourself in the kitchen, the other people you live with, and what kinds of activities are important. Kitchens like all other rooms are composed of centers .... Each one ... will receive your full attention as to its own organization and how it relates to the ones already in place. In the end they will all support each other in a collective strength which gives you, whether your kitchen is small or large, modest or high end, a comfortable place to work and just ‘be’.... The table will be the first and most important center. It will be where you share meals, talk, work, and relax with a cup of coffee. Even if you can have only a small table, it should be in the best position, a place where you really want to ‘be’ because of light, view, and a sheltered position in regard to traffic in the room. The table is the source of pleasure and of practical work together. A low-hanging lamp provides a pool of light in the evening which will be more com77

“Successful kitchens” according to Christopher Alexander: 4 Kitchen of the George Residence, Pleasant Hill, CA (1997, Christopher Alexander and the Center for Environmental Structure). 5 “Make the room beautiful and comfortable.” – Kitchen in a pre-war building in Zurich, 2005. 6 Kitchen of the Heisey Residence, Austin, TX (1995, Christopher Alexander and the Center for Environmental Structure).

78

fortable than homogeneous lighting .... Make the room beautiful and comfortable: this is what is important.”3 As Kurt Tucholsky once said, equally eloquently and maliciously, about Bertolt Brecht: “Even reading the ABCs in a measured singsong will draw the crowds.” Alexander’s Pattern Language is fraught with a similar momentum and simplicity, as if it were being delivered by Moses from Mount Sinai – only now instead of ten commandments there are two hundred fifty-three.4 Despite all the individual banalities (one hardly needs patterns to think of putting the kitchen table next to the window!) the book manages to strike a tone of longing that openly expresses what we all secretly wish for: wholeness. The unguardedness of Alexander’s tone makes him so vulnerable that one loses all interest in attacking him. One thing is sure: in Alexander’s kitchen traditional cooking is the rule. That means following Grandmother’s recipe, albeit with an occasional refinement reflecting a certain nostalgia for the upper class: the stew is made with real chicken broth instead of bouillon cubes, and the vegetables are supplemented with fresh thyme, clove, and morels – things that never would have made their way into Grandma’s original recipe let alone been considered edible. On the opposite end of the spectrum of contemporary kitchens – let’s call it the “sober modernist” end – we find the most technically advanced house in Germany, the Sobek House R128 that Werner Sobek built for his wife and himself in 1999–2000, a sequel to Mies van der Rohe’s 1951 Farnsworth House. Mies would have liked Sobek’s building, and would have envied him the technological intelligence Sobek availed himself of in pursuing his intended aesthetic aim: exclusively horizontal and vertical lines, and as far as possible nothing that might interfere with them. So none of the cabinet doors have handles, the familiar wall-cupboard has vanished entirely, the smooth doors and the refrigerator open by virtue of a simple wave of the hand registered by microwave sensors.5 The house’s almost square floor plan is articulated on the “kitchen level” only in air space by means of the steps, dining table, refrigerator, and kitchenette; the view in all directions remains open. Whether or not the technological genius at work here detracts from the aesthetic intention of inhabiting a house that is “a component of the environment,”6 may be viewed differently by a visitor than by the house’s owners, who deal with its amazing facilities on a daily basis: “The operation of auxiliary functions should be easy and independent, in the sense that it is always the user who applies this life-simplifying technology. The personification of technological devices – considering the computer as a ‘co-worker’ for example – is something I reject. I am more interested in technological procedures that make life easier and for that reason can be interpreted just a little as a luxury. It is important that these technologies, once applied, fulfill their desired functions in the best way possible, that they are robust and simple to use. Robustness here means combining sensory features in order to prevent unwanted effects. So, for example, we have infrared sensors combined with microwave sensors. None of this is particularly difficult or in79

volved, and it provides us with considerably greater comforts, which one soon becomes accustomed to.”7 It may also be considerably more expensive, but this isn’t the place to consider that, especially since these things can be mass-produced, and should they be mass-installed into future kitchens, prices would drop. Alexander Contra Sobek Neither of these two architects would feel at home in the kitchen of the other, yet both kitchens are without a doubt contemporary. Even Alexander’s kitchen is inconceivable without the (more) ample space available today, where the living area per person runs around 485 sq. ft. Unlike in the twenties, the kitchen today is no longer about the efficient accommodation of functions, but about luxury. This goes for the entire home as well, if you consider a more or less representative cross section of the population. For the first time in the history of Central Europe every man and woman has access to an adequately equipped home at an affordable price, or at a price made so by the state through a social housing plan or rent subsidies.8 This could hardly be said for the twenties, hence the “Frankfurt Kitchen” and “Munich” and “Stuttgart” and “Hamburg Kitchens”, all of which were reduced to their bare functions, regardless of whether they had a dining table or not. And this was considered an achievement, not because they had finally succeeded in reducing the kitchen (or other rooms as well) to their basic function, but because working-class apartments could thus be enlarged enough so that they could even function at all! The sociologist Alphons Silbermann, who has personally investigated contemporary living conditions, attributes changes in domestic behavior, including the “experience of the kitchen,” to the following points:

• “The general improvement in quality of life, often termed by sociologists the ‘elevator effect,’ that attended the economic boom in the Federal Republic. • The expansion in education, evident primarily in the greatly increased numbers of women with higher degrees. • The greater consumption orientation and market dependency of private households. • An ongoing individualization in all areas of life, and not only in terms of reducing household size, but also, for example, in terms of family law, the job market, consumer habits, or leisure activities, which involves the increasing superimposition of horizontal differences (life styles) on vertical ones (classes). • The weakening of the social system by economic crises and mass unemployment. • Scarcity of homes, increasing homelessness, and ‘the new poverty’ as expressions of an growing aggravation of the situation of minorities, which has run parallel to the economic boom, and not least of the migration patterns that also affect Germany.”9

80

7–10 Sobek House R128, Stuttgart (1999–2000, Werner Sobek). Kitchen level with detail views; living and dining areas.

81

Silbermann discovered in his study a new “model” of the kitchen: the “kitchen that opens out to another room.”10 This is by no means the only valid model; it has more to do with differentiating according to different parameters, as his detailed study shows: “By way of a summary, the results concerning kitchen use treated in this chapter all indicate that a use pattern based on single-function kitchen use, which remains strongly oriented to meal preparation, is still dependent on a number of things: first, on the size of the kitchen; second, on the life circumstances of the individual or the household – i.e. age, gender, type of dwelling; third, on lifestyle, which is expressed in everyday activity and aesthetic sense and is bound to specific life circumstances. Thus do the lifestyles and domestic habits of younger people demonstrate more than those of the older population tendencies to expand kitchen use in terms of increasing multifunctionality.”11 In terms of finding out what kind of kitchens are actually in demand today, we can confidently fall back on Silbermann: his “young people,” advocates of the open kitchen, are not only ten years older since his investigation, they are more numerous as well. The only problem might be that the great majority of apartments still have the old “kitchen cells”; and they can hardly be renovated according to the open kitchen model since most of them in the Federal Republic are rental units. Only in 1970 were housing construction standards revised to include standards for such kitchens as well. Their raison d’être was clearly that of social housing inherited from the twenties and thirties. Accordingly, the rooms were designed around a given type and number of items of furniture, the dimensions of which were treated as sacrosanct. Hand in hand, the DIN-standards and 11 The desire for better connections between the kitchen and the dining / living area was often only timidly pursued. Photograph 1963.

82

“the Neufert”12 played their fateful and as yet unsurmountable game here as well. Today the tendency is definitely in favor of the “open kitchen,” no matter how great the practical obstacles may be.13

12–13 Standard floor plans from the 1970s: on the left, a separate kitchen; on the right a narrow door connects the kitchen and dining area.

Beyond the Bandwidth: the Usual That Werner Sobek’s kitchen is an “open” one is indisputable. With Alexander’s, on the other hand, matters are not so clear, especially when what we have to go on are examples from A Pattern Language, which is expressly oriented to well-founded solutions rather than to prototypes. On the one hand, Silbermann’s “multifunctional kitchen” is connected with other rooms, although that does not really make it “open”; on the other hand, if it is large enough, one can consider it to be so. Presumably Sobek and Alexander would find each other’s kitchens appalling – regardless of how willing they each were to accept it as reflecting the taste of a strange, though hardly illegal species. Alexander’s would undoubtedly be a nightmare for any cleaning lady. But precisely because of its imperfection, outdatedness, and rough edges, it epitomizes comfort and coziness. It seems familiar and awakens memories of times when people trudged through the fields by the light of a kerosene lamp. This is not meant as a caricature: the longing for wholeness is an immense force. Alexander’s kitchen is not, by the way, particularly cheap. Finely crafted rustic cupboards, hutches, tables, and chairs – all of which we can take for granted with Alexander – cost a great deal of money. The Sobek installation of storage and cooking functions is no doubt easy to clean; which is good, because it demands to be cleaned immediately after use. But even a pile of vegetables on the cutting board would be a disruption of order!

However, neither of these two prototypically opposite kitchens has much to do with reality, i.e. the “usual” kitchen to be found in the average central European home. This assertion is supported by Silbermann’s perception, which he corroborated by visiting less upscale kitchens: “The ‘rustic’ kitchen model, which includes a great deal of visible natural wood and is correspondingly decorated in colors generally considered as ‘warm,’ was predominantly popular, we determined, amongst older persons, persons with a lower level of edu83

cation, and people from low- and middle-income households. [It] can be said that these people express their idea of ‘homey comfort’ in the kitchen. Equally unambiguous sociodemographic conditions can be discerned for the model of the ‘modern’ or ‘avant-garde’ kitchen . . .. The deciding factor here is age. Only in groups of those under forty-nine years old did we find the majority having this preference; and even here, it seemed that the younger they were, the more strongly they had it. Here, too, the level of education played an important role; the more highly educated a person was, the more likely he or she was to prefer the modern style.”14 Simplistically put, this means that the elderly, the uneducated, and the indigent all feel at home in Christopher Alexander’s kitchen world, while the young and intelligent are inclined to Sobek’s (if only because they may well be the only ones who can operate it!). Unfortunately things are not so simple. For even if that last statement may be correct, the first is not, for two reasons. For one, the kitchen that Alexander presents as successful is hardly one that low-income people could afford. The surrogate of this surrogate, however – i.e. the rustic kitchen timbered together out of particle board from the local Home Depot – will lack the aesthetic quality

The homey feel of wood in contrast with gleaming steel and aluminum. 14 Kitchen in the popular “country house style.” This type can be had in all price categories. 15 Kitchen, Sobek House R128, Stuttgart (1999–2000, Werner Sobek).

84

that Alexander’s kitchen emanates in the photographs. The difference would be immediately noticeable. Another point is that the “young people” in Silbermann’s study will naturally gradually become “older” – and then, a strange metamorphosis, they will begin to prefer the traditional kitchen! Even if that were not the case, if the younger people were to maintain their preferences in old age, too, then the devotees of the traditional kitchen would certainly die out – which is not the case: the traditional kitchen remains quite popular, as a visit to any kitchen department store will show. The desire for wholeness only increases with age and seeks out familiar forms – which are not so familiar in fact, since it was the “modern” kitchen that one knew in one’s youth (which unduly abridges sociological findings, but is nevertheless remarkable as a phenomenon). The familiar is apparently just as much a projected fiction as is the modern. After all, brushed steel (“the sandblasted banisters feel satiny-smooth,” raves Sobek15), microprocessors, and countersunk door knobs are more than just functions; they stand for something. With all their satinysmoothness, they conspicuously display how practical, functional, and future-oriented they are. These home owners are firmly planted in the here-and-now and want to make sure that everyone knows it. The kitchen as a site for self-fashioning and display, where it is lifestyle that gets foregrounded rather than the capacity and technological facilities for nutritional preparation. This is a luxury issue, no question about it. People who have difficulty even buying a stove for cooking and finding room for it will take what they can get. Design only enters the picture when surplus has become the rule. In this respect a great deal really has changed since the days of the “Frankfurt Kitchen.” Then, a stove for cooking was installed and almost ostentatiously made to fit in. The fitted kitchens of the fifties and sixties underscored this: with prefab furniture installed, there was little room for anything else, and the space was used one hundred percent. The “factory of the housewife” was set until new possibilities brought with them new needs. As Michael Andritzky summarizes: The working kitchen is out, and the kitchen is opening itself up again as a living space. Its sensory qualities have been rediscovered, but are hardly used: no one remembers how to cook anymore. The nostalgic longing for the lost warmth of the fire is reflected in the new interior décor – the functional kitchen with crown glass. A society of affluence has taken root; the days of pinching pennies are over.”16

16 Kitchen as stage: bulthaup b3, 2004 (following double-page spread).

Coming Soon . . . Social realities reflected in kitchen design can be documented to the present day and are nothing to be particularly surprised about. The newest trend has been to shift from a permanent, static fitted kitchen to a “modularized” one. Although it sounds like just a catchy term for the fact that refrigerators and dishwashers are separate appliances, this actually has to do with something that intersects with the desire for more space, for the “open” kitchen: the needs of the modern nomad who, fleeing the specter of unemployment, must move from one city to the next, or at least from apartment to apartment. The modularized kitchen basically means that kitchen furniture, which we earlier on gave a half-life of twenty 85

years, now in these modern times tend to outlast the average length of occupancy in an apartment or house. Flexibility is everything, and as long as we are being hounded by the Furies of unemployment, then at least the kitchen, our homely hearth, will preserve the sense of continuity. Finally we are seeing the actualization of the 1920s avant-garde dream, the dream of the modern nomad, as formulated by Ludwig Hilberseimer: “In case one must move house, a moving van is no longer necessary; all one needs to pack now are suitcases.”17 The newest concept from the Bulthaup company, which Otl Aicher used to design for in his day, goes a step further. Now – or better: the day after tomorrow, when we will have more room – we can have more than just modules, we can have our own kitchen wall, installed in front of the existing one. “Previously, kitchen planning was dictated mainly by the floor plan. With Bulthaup b3, the kitchen evolves from the wall, or more specifically from the functional wall. Furniture and horizontal panels can now for the first time be freely suspended from it. All Bulthaup b3 elements such as cupboards, sideboards, lights, and appliances become functional carriers within a creative overall plan of the wall. From a technical perspective, the functional wall is a highly stable steel skeleton ....”18 – though hardly as easy to take with you as Hilberseimer’s suitcase was. “The increased application of computer technologie will turn everyday life in the kitchen upside down. Intelligent networked household appliances will take over burdensome routine work. There are already prototypes for intelligent refrigerators. A touchscreen allows kitchen appliances like the stove and the dishwasher to be centrally controlled. The screenfridge can download videomails or recipes from the internet. It oversees expiration dates and automatically organizes what needs to be restocked from the supermarket – online or by fax.”19 How will history continue? One thing we can be sure of is that industry will go on inventing machines that make physical labor easier for the housewife or househusband by encumbering intellectual instead of sensory faculties – she or he will have to comprehend the operating instructions after all. Machines that increasingly are being designed for multiple uses and thus conform to the trend in kitchens: mobility and multifunctionality: “We will have to rethink leisure and work, which means likewise that we will have to redesign the space in our houses. For me, the kitchen/ home office is an ideal foundation for this new thinking. With the help of new electronic components and even new materials, such a kitchen could no doubt be mutifunctionally designed so that it can be used both for cooking and as a modern office space.”20 The Kitchen Office as a Vision of the Future? Cynics can make their own calculation: a home for living and working, with a kitchen of variously functioning appliances, serves as little for cooking as the office does for work. In times of structural mass unemployment we can afford little more than a studio apartment – the freelancer meets the multifunctional kitchen, modularized for the quick move. And here we would find ourselves back where the children once did their homework at the kitchen table while Mother brandished 88

her cooking spoon: the nineteenth-century working-class tenement. As the table shows, this is already the situation for nineteen percent of families today. The only differences would be that now the father, along with his computer, would also be sitting at the table, calling to have a pizza delivered from the videophone in the refrigerator. It is no longer the stove, the hearth, that is the center of the family, but the microwave oven/washing machine, where you can heat up a frozen dinner while washing your clothes. And a large percentage of the money one earns with ones side jobs and freelance work goes into the pockets of the electric company, because a rather unpleasant, but little considered side effect of all these innovations is that they only function when there is enough juice coming out of the wall socket. If everyone is to be communicating with everyone else, then we will all have to stand at attention around the clock, in standby mode. According to a prognosis of the Fraunhofer Institute, by the year 2010 the use of communications and information devices in the household will have increased electricity consumption by forty-five percent. And the liberation of women that in the twenties the “Frankfurt Kitchen” was supposed to hasten on? Well, it was a rather strange theory anyway to think one could liberate woman by first making her a “factory worker in the home.” She was, in fact, doubly cut off from urban life, first through her own isolation in the kitchen cell

17–19 Transition from the living room to the kitchen, both furnished in bulthaup b3. 18–19 The b3 “functional wall” on which variously sized components, appliances, and furniture can be hung. Here is what the manufacturer has to say (Bulthaup press release, 2004): “Bulthaup firmly believes in using genuine products – the design should not pretend to be something that it isn’t. This demand for authenticity, combined with the lightness of the products, dovetail into a consistently clear design concept. At Bulthaup, there is no place for façade, arbitrariness, or forced extravagance. No flourishes, no fanciful edges and no illusory details mar the pure form that takes on a sculpted quality as a result.”

89

and then through that of the housing development, May’s “suburban satellite” orbiting around the city. “What was originally considered a building block of the ‘minimal existence home,’ a beneficial measure for reducing the enormous housing shortages in cities, became a trap for the housewife. The few square feet of rationalized space made it imposssible to do much more in it than cook, uncoupled from the the family, who were waiting in the next room for their meal to be served. The emergency measure had become a dismal standard.”21 The liberation of the housewife was hastened (if unintentionally) by Otl Aicher’s 1982 Küche zum Kochen. Here “liberation” had to do quite simply with the increase in floor space mentioned earlier. Anyone who had a lot of space, enough so that he could install one of Aicher’s kitchens, would naturally feel less functionalized: “Otl Aicher did not especially design his ideal communication-oriented kitchen with either men or women in mind. But he succeeded in stripping off the corset of the post-war kitchen, in which more women than men on average were confined.”22 And what sort of kitchen belongs to the respected author mentioned at the beginning of this essay – whom, perhaps significantly, we discovered not at home but in an Italian restaurant? After all we have learned so far, we might find him in a technologically well equipped but cozy kitchen à la Alexander, albeit of a somewhat different aesthetic mold: the elevated rustic kitchen would be too much ... In fact he prepares his traditional househusband fare – those remarkable hamburgers! – in a home office/living room/kitchen. And even today he still has not figured out how to work all the devices. Percentage of those surveyed who undertake the following activities in the kitchen

20 Activities conducted in the kitchen. 21 Time spent in the kitchen in Germany, hourly average per day.

cooking/preparing meals eating breakfast holding conversations other than during mealtimes eating dinner eating lunch listening to the radio/to music reading newspapers/magazines repairing writing activities mending and ironing laundry washing/drying/folding polishing/caring for shoes pursuing hobbies reading books talking on the telephone playing with children playing games with other adults doing homework percentage sum

total

90

west

east

men

97 % 83 % 83 % 83 % 79 % 75 % 67 % 59 % 52 % 51 % 44 % 38 % 38 % 34 % 33 % 29 % 26 % 19 % 986 %

women

most common

least common

1 person 2 person 3 to 4 person 5+ person household household household household

22 The return of the kitchen as an inspiring, poetic space for a variety of activities, from cooking and eating, to having discussions, communicating, working, and simply passing time.

91

1 AMK Service GmbH, http://www.amk.de/ratgeber.htm (accessed 31 May, 2005). 2 On the basis of reports by housewives, the Reichsforschungsgesellschaft für Wirtschaftlichkeit im Bauwesen (RFG) [Reich Research Commission for Building Construction Efficiency] investigated the quality of the Frankfurt Kitchen in a report on the Praunheim experimental housing development and came upon a series of functional deficiencies resulting partly from the kitchen’s exaggerated purpose. The commission determined that of the eighteen pre-labeled stock bins, “around twelve [were] unnecessary.” The room was “not entirely useable due to the permanently installed furniture, which could not be adapted to multiple needs.” Quite often “the residents indicated that the kitchen was too narrow for an efficient household since most of them wanted to use it for other work as well, and because it was also often necessary for more than one person to be in the kitchen at the same time.” However, the RFG affirmed Ms. Schütte-Lihotzky’s positive attempt, which nevertheless “ overshot its goal through excessive organization” (Reichsforschungsgesellschaft für Wirtschaftlichkeit im Bauwesen e.V., Bericht über die Versuchssiedlung in Frankfurt a.M. – Praunheim 2, special issue 4, Group IV, no. 1 [April 1929]: 22–30). The emancipatory project, which aimed to provide individuals with greater freedom by minimizing unproductive work, was neutralized by the wide-ranging standardization of requirements and the functionalization of integrated relations. 3 http://www.patternlanguage.com/kitchen/keyissues3.htm (accessed 31 May, 2005). See also Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein et al. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 4 This impression is consciously invoked. On the website, for example, next to the heading “Create Your Own Kitchen,” the fragment of Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sixtine Chapel is shown where God endows man with a soul through his outstretched finger. Create your own kitchen? 5 The entire, highly complicated process is described in detail, along with an overview of the house’s sophisticated technological features, in a documentation in Arch+ 157 (September 2001): 30–55. 6 Werner Sobek, “Sobeks Sensor,” interview with Nikolaus Kuhnert und Angelika Schnell,” Arch+ 157 (September 2001): 24–29; 24. 7 Ibid., 25. 8 This is not to say that certain social groups, single mothers for example, do not remain faced with considerable difficulties. But in terms of the average, the provision of housing remains better now than it has ever been before. 9 Alphons Silbermann, Die Küche im Wohnerlebnis der Deutschen: Eine soziologische Studie (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1995): 27–28. 10 Ibid., 59. 11 Ibid., 112. 12 On Neufert, see footnote 2 in the essay by Brigitte Kesselring in this volume. 13 One interesting finding might be that kitchens become more open the less they are cooked in, because the problem of cooking odors is no longer so great. The propagandist for American kitchens, Adolf Loos, once suggested, both pointedly and imperiously, that “it would be very good for human nutrition if we could cook without it stinking ... I don’t understand why food has to stink, to have such an unsavory odor .... Cauliflower and cabbage, on which chamber pots were being emptied only days before, can simply be done without.” (Adolf Loos, “Die moderne Siedlung” (1926), in Adolf Loos. Sämtliche Schriften in zwei Bänden, edited by Franz Glück, vol. 1 (Vienna and Munich: Herold, 1962): 402–428; 414. 14 Silbermann, Die Küche, 149. 15 Werner Sobek interview, Arch+ 157, 25. 16 Michael Andritzky, introduction to essay by Helmut Krauch, “Die Küche der 70er Jahre,” Oikos – Von der Feuerstelle zur Mikrowelle. Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel, ed. Michael Andritzky (Giessen: Anabas, 1992): 133. 17 Ludwig Hilberseimer, Groszstadtarchitektur (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1927): 19. 18 Bulthaup press release, April 2004 (http://www.uk.bulthaup-press.net/, accessed 25 August 2005). 19 Jochen Dietrich and Lisa Vieth, “Die Küche der Zukunft,” WDR Ratgeber Bauen und Wohnen (21 January 2000), http://www.wdr.de/tv/ardbauen/archiv/000115_4.html#0 (accessed 31 May 2005). 20 Peter Zec, cited in “Die Küche der Zukunft.” 21 Oliver Elser, “Kampf um die Küche,” Der Standard (15 October 2004), http://die standard.at/?url=/?id=1825356 (accessed 31 May 2005). 22 Ibid.

92

Christina Sonderegger

Between Progress and Idling: The Standard Kitchen Notes on the Development of the Swiss Kitchen Norm

Individuals planning a kitchen today deal with exclusive manufacturers and fancy designer names, engage in precious materials, surface textures, and high-tech appliances. The kitchen has become a showpiece and status symbol. Grappling with norms and standards is unimaginable in this day and age. In the late fifties and sixties, however, the question of standardized norms was a core issue in kitchen architecture in Switzerland. At that time, in Europe, Switzerland was at the fore in implementing a uniform authoritive norm. But it was also particular and thoroughly pugnacious when discussing issues such as a defined centimeter because the Swiss norm still differs from foreign dimensions by five centimeters (a little under two inches). Within Europe, Swiss kitchen and appliance manufacturers held on to their “extra bit” for decades – a piece of Swiss industrial history that in the era of globalization sounds even more exotic than it was at the time.

Norm, system, module: Detail of a Therma fitted kitchen, 1960s.

Home and Kitchen in the Post-War Era The decades after the Second World War were shaped by a general construction boom and social optimism that was evident in the designed environment. The old forms, colors, and materials were discarded, and space was cleared for a buoyant modernity. Lifestyle was redefined. Individual ensembles of color and uncomplicated single units gave the home an unavoidable contemporary and modern feel. The trend of the times was characterized by lightweight, multifunctional furniture that stood out in the open in the room like sculpture. While curved forms promised a dynamic force and the dawning of a new era, orthogonal furniture models suggested the ensemble and added character. Furniture could often be used from different sides, and they no longer really possessed a rear panel. In the kitchen, on the other hand, pre-war models persevered longer than in living rooms. It would be worth investigating whether this has to do with the traditional roles of man and woman or with the higher cost of a kitchen cooker. The fact is, modernity arrived later in the traditional domain of the woman. The typical pre-war furniture of free-standing appliances and heirlooms proved very popular even after the war. Cooker, cupboard, and maybe a refrigerator were put wherever space allowed for their size. Arranging furniture according to the work procedure was not an issue; and the housewife labored in a badly organized workplace, as if ergonomics 95

Freestanding and perhaps chance combined appliances and furniture still determined the image of the kitchen far into the 1950s and 60s. 1 Kitchen with Siemens electric cooker, freestanding refrigerator and small electric boiler for the sink, 1958. 2 “The full electric kitchen” with Therma appliances, late 1940s.

and rationalization had never touched the kitchen. Cumbersome, arduous, and time-consuming, it was the anachronistic fossil in the modern household. Yet the kitchen did not have to be so old-fashioned. It had been electrified in many cases as early as the thirties. But, at least in Europe, it simply did not seem to have yet found a suitable form. Ergonomics and Industry In America, the necessity to understand housework as a profession that could be learned and organized was recognized as early as the mid nineteenth century. Catherine Beecher (1800–1878), American pioneer of the rationalized kitchen, published in her 1869 book The American Woman’s Home 1 concrete suggestions for a thoroughly organized, work-saving kitchen plan. The large kitchen table and isolated buffet disappeared and were replaced by concentrated, arranged, interconnected work surfaces that were supplemented with drawers located under them and shelves on the walls. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Christine Frederick, an American, and Erna Meyer, a German, developed on Catherine Beecher’s legacy; and influenced by industrial science studies by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) and Frank B. Gilbreth (1868–1924), they advanced kitchens with smaller-scale ground plans and with appliances and furnishings arranged more sensibly according to the most common work procedures.2 The Forerunner of the Fitted Kitchen While in Switzerland in the forties the first forerunner of the fitted kitchen appeared with individual combination sinks, the American housewife was already working in a standardized, dynamic-sounding “streamlined kitchen.” Innovations may have occurred in the twenties and thirties regarding rationalization and standardization, but the war abruptly put a stop to this. The twenty-one sq. ft. “Frankfurt Kitchen”, developed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Ernst May in 1926 and incorporated into the “New Frankfurt” workers’ settlements, was organized in terms of work efficiency and industrial criteria. With its continuous work surfaces and fitted wall cupboards, it provided a small laboratory for the woman, who increasingly had obligations outside of the home. The rationalist philosophy of the “Frankfurt Kitchen” paved the 96

Other than the kitchen, residential furniture design could be more quickly conquered by new trends. 3–4 Residential high-rise buildings on Letzigraben, Zurich (1950–52, A. H. Steiner), livingroom with a shelf as room divider.

way for the fitted kitchen. Despite its undeniable advantages regarding efficiency and hygiene, it would still be some time before it was accepted. The war and sluggish technological development contributed to the fact that, as a rule, kitchens at the end of the forties still consisted of individual, freestanding furniture and appliances. This out-of-date arrangement was gradually replaced by the combination sink. A refrigerator, boiler, and cupboards were combined beneath a continuous covering of chrome steel with an embedded sink. The cooker was added separately to the combination at first, until Therma AG and Franke metals works in Aarburg put the first combination with integrated cooker on the market in 1951. The sink combination presented a significant step toward the development of the fitted kitchen as far as unity and compactness were concerned. However, it was different from later fitted kitchens that presented a system of standardized, interchangeable single units – constructively seen as furniture available in diverse sizes and variations. A basic difference becomes apparent when comparing examples of kitchen and home furniture. While furniture in living areas and work spaces consisted mainly of freestanding single units, kitchen furniture, on the other hand, was increasingly unified, compacted, and pushed to the wall.

5 “If you love your children, you cook electric!” Therma’s sales slogan gained rapid significance in the post-war years. “Electric” cooking was considered progressive at the time. Gas cookers were often replaced by electric cookers even if a gas connection was available. There are electric cookers today in over 90 % of Swiss homes, 10 % cook with gas (Therma brochure, 1930/35). 6 The classic “freestanding cooker” was preferred for decades: Siemens electric “Protos kitchen” cooker, 1950s.

97

The first step towards the fitted kitchen: the so-called “combination sink” became more and more popular at the end of the 1940s. 7 Cooker-refrigerator-sink-combination (Therma brochure, 1949). 8 “Therma modernizes the Swiss kitchen”: Kitchen combination with cooker, boiler, sink, trough cabinet and extractable work place (Therma prospectus, 1954).

These forerunners of the fitted kitchen were praised in the fifties as every housewife’s dream. She would no longer be a “Cinderella”3 in her kitchen. Shiny work surfaces of chrome steel, colorful, easy-to-care-for plastic surfaces, and appliances “of fascinating formal beauty”4 addressed the “specific female need for beauty and harmony.”5 The woman at the hearth would “govern like a princess in the grandest room of the home and the electric fitted kitchen would make her work and life easier, give her more leisure time, and keep her young and flexible for longer.”6 The idea that the woman could now apply her “conserved energy” to a profession outside of the home was not mentioned in the advertisements at the time. Flexibility and Norm After the Second World War, the kitchen was given a great amount of attention from different sides. The functional arrangement, the most appropriate materials, as well as the dimensions of the built-in units were reason for discussion. Existing examples were analyzed: the American housewife’s sink unit was located in most cases under the window; and her preparation area was, compared to the Swiss housewife’s, noticeably small, which was explained by the “almost exclusive use of canned goods.”7 The cooker in the Swiss kitchen was located as a rule to the right and the sink unit to the left of the work surface. The oven in the English kitchen was preferably built to table height. In terms of material, chrome surfaces had the advantage of being resistant to heat and acid, yet were generally considered unpleasantly cold. On those fronts, colorful plastic was competing with undesirable metal. From every point of the discussion, and with the idea of the fitted kitchen in mind, standardizing the dimensions of units was considered an urgent task in Switzerland. It is almost impossible today to conclusively ascertain why the concept of the stationary, fitted kitchen was pushed so particularly in Switzerland. It is clear that both the construction boom and prefabrication, which was a general tendency in construction at the end of the fifties, encouraged the development of the fitted kitchen. Maybe it also needed a driving force in one right place to materialize a development in the making. Seen in this way, three names might have been of decisive significance. Therma AG, then the largest 98

9–10 Extensive kitchen combinations with top cabinet, 1950s. Contrary to later fitted kitchens, these kitchens were not yet based on a standardized system in a module construction method and were partially custom fitted to the room’s dimensions. Characteristic 1950s forms, colors, and details were later replaced by a more stringent, mostly white design concept.

11 In the post-war era, Therma was already one of the leading Swiss enterprises in the manufacture of heating and kitchen appliances: “Housing colonies, complete with Therma cookers and boilers” (Photo montage from a Therma anniversary publication, 1932).

manufacturer of electro-thermal home appliances, Franke AG, which produced the chrome coverings, and Hans Hilfiker (1901–1993), who from 1958 until 1968 served as director and chief designer at Therma AG. It was Hans Hilfiker who not only recognized measurement accuracy as the fitted kitchen’s most important prerequisite, but also decisively contributed to the engineering of its products. Thus he tightened Therma AG’s production program, rationalized the production process and worked on a clear design expression. Hilfiker managed to create for Switzerland an exemplary formal unity of product design, construction, function, and graphic design advertising image.8 Before he took on designing home appliances and their standardization, Hilfiker had worked for the Swiss Federal Railway as an industrial, electrical, and construction engineer.9 One of his most important works during that time was the standardized cabinet system for circuitry and electronics, the prototype of a ninety-meterlong railway station roof standing on balancing posts, as well as an elegant loading crane. Hilfiker’s most popular design, however, is the second hand of the Swiss Rail Station clock, a red signal trowel that has been circling around the dial since 1955. Innovative creativity along with an unremitting search for formal simplicity and typestandardization characterizes his work. He was able to realize both at Therma AG. The primary reasons behind a kitchen norm were both technical and economic but also psychological in nature. The main purpose was to simplify the cooperation between planners, architects, manufacturers, appliance manufacturers, and workers on site. In addition, authoritive dimensions were a precondition for industrial prefabrication and system construction. A serial prefabrication guaranteed, on the one hand, the supply of a large quantity of single units and contributed to their lower cost. Another reason that supported the devising of a norm lay in the “essence” of the fitted kitchen itself. With it, kitchen furniture became a system – it solidified. Introducing a construction kit system with standardized single units accommodated the need for individuality and flexibility at least a little. Because the fitted kitchen, despite its advantages for efficiency and hygiene, was accompanied by a loss of freedom to arrange, shift, and replace the furniture and appliances at will. In order to keep these limitations to a minimum, the organization of 99

stationary objects needed to be carefully considered and had to include the possibility of a certain amount of variability. In addition, the simple replacement of a defective appliance was guaranteed for decades. Swiss Kitchen Norms The Swiss kitchen norm is 55–60–90 cm: the width of a unit is 55 cm (21.6 in), its depth 60 cm (23.6), and height 90 cm (35.4 in). With the longitudinal dimension of 55 cm, the Swiss kitchen differs from the standard functional ISO norm, which has 10 cm unit intervals. Different from the unit height and depth, this unit’s width has no relation to bodily dimensions or with the tasks to be performed; it represents a purely calculated solution.10 Hans Hilfiker derived the Swiss convention’s dimensions from the nature of kitchen work and from the statistics of bodily dimen-

Therma products were not only known for their functionality, robust quality, and convincing design, they were represented perfectly in their advertizing graphics. 12 New Therma logotype by Carlo L. Vivarelli, 1958. 13 Prospectus for Therma small appliances, 1960. 14–15 Cooking, preparing, presenting all in one place: Therma cooker hobs with folding hot plates, exhibition prototype for the MUBA (Basel Trade Fair), 1958 (Therma advertizing prospectus, 1958).

sions. The height of the unit for standing work was not easily determined as the requirements of the work table depended on the task. Thus the best average working height of a cooker was about 85 cm (33.5 in), and for the sink, which as a rule was set 16 cm into the cover panel, at 92 cm (36.2 in). The need for two different heights was abandoned in favor of a standard height. Because an oven can be slightly higher without any major disadvantages, but a sink that is too low causes uncomfortable stooping, a compromise was made at 90 cm. The depth of the unit at 60 cm resulted from its various functions and the average length of the arm. Hilfiker did not derive the unit’s width from either bodily dimensions or task requirements, but arrived at it by taking the highest level of economic efficiency into account: a sensible standardization should be based on economy, and since the square is the form which possesses the smallest perimeter for a given surface area, it had to form the surface unit.11 100

He acquired the optimal side length of this square in this way: From the 60 cm (23.6 in) unit depth, he subtracted 1 cm of distance to the wall, which is necessary to compensate for unevenness in the wall and to guarantee a hygienic alignment of the covering. Two centimeters accounted for the covering’s projection, which served as a drip catch. A further two were left for the material’s thickness. All this ultimately resulted in a clearance depth and a unit width of 55 cm (21.6 in). Defining the width as a spatial and not as an axial dimension is important for the structure and the easy-to-handle construction kit system. Determining a standard dimension for the niche is decisive for the installation and replacement of appliances. A fitted kitchen is constructed as a type of case, where a cooker, refrigerator, or dishwashing machine can be easily inserted into the gaps in the structure without any further constructional measures.

16 55–60–90: During the 1960s, the Therma kitchen norm became the Swiss kitchen norm (SINK norm, from 1996 SMS; Therma prospectus, 1958).

Since the use of a conventional dimension grows with its distribution, Hilfiker was active in getting other significant Swiss firms in the industry to assume the conventional dimensions of 55–60–90, first defined as the Therma norm. In just a few years, almost every appliance and kitchen manufacturer more or less willingly adopted the new regulations and accepted the Therma norm as the general Swiss industrial norm. Other interesting circles teamed up with the pioneer firms Therma and Franke to form an association called SINK, Schweizerische Industriekommission zur Normung der Küche [Swiss Industrial Commission for Kitchen Standardization]. They launched the Therma norm under the term SINK norm. It is not possible, despite thorough research and discussion, to clearly determine when exactly the SINK norm became authoritative in Switzerland.12 But what is known is that Hilfiker addressed the problem of standardization in 1958, right at the onset of his 101

appointment at Therma. Every appliance thereafter was made to the basic measurements of 55–60–90 cm. Sources mention the completed development of a norm at the beginning of the sixties.13 Hilfiker himself mentioned the norm for the first time in public in a 1967 lecture.14 It can be assumed that the introduction of the Swiss norm took place gradually during the first half of the sixties. Even if the unit width of 55 cm represented the Swiss kitchen’s significant characteristic, how the height was calculated is equally notable. It stemmed from one sixth of the base frame. From a height of 600 mm (23.6 in) 105 mm was subtracted for the continuous base as well as 30 mm for the covering and 3 mm for possible irregularities, which resulted in a clearance of 762 mm (30 in) or 6 x 127 mm. The entire horizontal arrangement is based on one sixth of 127 mm (5 in). The drawers and cupboards as well as the arrangement of appliances followed this system. The spacing between the basic frame unit and the lower edge of the top cupboards was also calculated in sixths.15 The Swiss kitchen norm is not only defined by a unit dimension of 55–60–90, but also by a height division in sixths of 127 mm. With a niche dimension of 55 cm and the height grid of n/6, a minimum of data is needed to deliver all the information necessary for the fitted kitchen’s entire system. With these clear regulations, an additional catalog of dimensions was achieved. This is the particular triumph of the Swiss kitchen norm, to clearly define a construction system with very little information. This is one reason why the Swiss kitchen norm, compared to other dimension indexes, is still in use today. The SINK norm was temporarily written with periods (S.I.N.K) at the end of the sixties in order to avoid associations with the English word “sink.”16 In 1966 it was renamed to SMS (Schweizer MassSystem, or Swiss Measurement System), without the norm being changed. Even today, forty years later, over sixty percent of appliances are still produced by Switzerland’s main kitchen manufacturers according to the 55 cm norm.17 Norm as Aesthetic Expression Parallel to the preparation of the kitchen norm, a seminal cooker construction kit system was developed. This was because technical limitations prevented Therma AG from immediately beginning with the production of fitted kitchens; instead they went with the next smallest unit, the cooker. The assortment of cookers at that time was very extensive and non-standard. The single cooker was of varying sizes depending on the number of burners or whether it was equipped with an oven. Hilfiker now amalgamated the individual appliance types in corresponding dimensions and design. The cooker construction kit system he designed allowed for approximately three hundred different variations, either for installation or as freestanding models.18 This system of standardized cabinets with individual functions guaranteed the formal unity of Therma kitchens. The front side of the new cooker was divided into three different large zones, which corresponded to the height modules. The height of the switch panel corresponded to one, the oven to three, and the appliance’s drawers to two sixths. Hilfiker was implying here that it was no longer about a single cast object, but about a modular object consisting of singular, interchangeable 102

17 Therma one-front fitted kitchen, 1960s: formal clarity as expression of a system philosophy. 18 “In every configuration, Therma kitchens form a unity thanks to the formal harmony of their elements”: Installation and basic measurements of a Therma fitted kitchen, model A, 1960s. 19 Therma stand at the MUBA (Basel Trade Fair), 1960.

103

units, which is part of a larger whole. The formal specification of the cooker was thus an expression of a design attitude that no longer prioritized the single piece, but the interplay of single parts within an entire complex. Hilfiker underlined the cooker system philosophy with their name. He replaced associative names like “the household oven” or “work oven” with a type designation. Every type received a two-part name that exactly defined its features and size. The level of comfort was defined using the Greek alphabet of alpha, beta, gamma, and delta, and the size was determined by the interior width of the oven, which was either 40 or 32 cm (15.7 or 12.6 in). With the new refrigerator line of 1965, the type was particularly recognizable because there were no longer types graded according to size, but now just one single norm unit with different refrigeration features.19 The five new refrigerator varieties could be combined and integrated with individual cold storage elements. Prefabrication and Architecture Therma AG was primarily an electro-thermal appliance company. Due to its intense engagement with the kitchen, the company no longer had to limit itself to appliances, but could now tackle developing the entire kitchen. While at the beginning of Hilfiker’s direction, Therma first manufactured individual appliances and combi20–23 Gradual unfolding: Therma advertising campaign prior to the MUBA (Basel Trade Fair), 1961.

104

nation sinks for installation, they moved on at the beginning of the sixties to producing fitted kitchens. This had its consequences however. Its double role as a supplier of appliances and kitchen manufacturer caused it to enter a difficult competitive situation with other kitchen manufacturers. This gradually led to these companies no longer purchasing their appliances from their competitor, Therma, but rather from other appliance manufacturers. This and the recession prompted Therma in 1975 to reduce manufacturing entire fitted kitchens and to concentrate again on producing appliances.20 With regard to prefabrication, Therma AG was a pioneer in Switzerland. Hilfiker may have referred to parallel “tendencies in architecture,” but quite honestly he had already outstripped architecture in this regard. While constructions using prefabricated elements represented an exception at the end of the sixties, individual units for the kitchen were already rolling off the assembly line in mass production in Schwanden, where Therma was based. As far as production technology was concerned, the construction of fitted kitchens signified a switch from commercial to industrial production. Starting in 1962, in their own specially designed factory, single parts for kitchen and appliances were being prefabricated in large numbers, stored intermediately, and then on short notice installed onto different end products.

“Home” or “Lords Cooker” became “alpha” – “beta – “gamma” – “delta”: Therma’s product assortment at the end of the 1940s still specified a variety of cooker models, this was reduced in 1961 to four basic models with different levels of comfort. 24 “The complete electric cooker” (Therma poster, 1935). 25 Therma cooker, around 1948 (Therma brochure). 26 Therma cooker “gamma 40” in production as of 1961. 27 “Hurray! The new Therma cooker has arrived!” (shop window, Aare Tessin AG, Olten, 1961).

105

The compactness of the fitted kitchen made it possible – once again – to shrink the scale of the kitchen down to laboratory size. This accommodated the construction of cost-efficient housing. The standardized kitchen was developed during the same period that the real estate market bottomed out, and the number of empty apartments in Switzerland had fallen to a dangerous low.21 With industrial prefabrication it was possible in Schwanden to react at short notice to the need to supply large quantities. Therma kitchens were not cheap, however; yet great store was set in top-notch, solid quality work that would guarantee a long life span and lasting aesthetic. Therma kitchen cabinets and drawers were manufactured in enameled steel, just like their appliances. Hilfiker chose a neutral white for their color, since the Therma kitchen did not want to be degraded after a period of time as obsolete because of its color. It is not surprising that practically every design from this period received the “Die gute Form” [The Good Form] award by the The Swiss Werkbund. 22 During these pioneer years, different sorts of fixtures spanning from wall to wall were subsumed under the term “fitted kitchen.” In addition to kitchen buffets, Ernst Göhner AG developed two types of fitted kitchens as early as the forties. Fitted blocks with integrated appliances and fixtures: Göhner fitted kitchens Standard and the somewhat larger Ideal. 23 The cooker however was not built-in, but was a Therma freestanding cooker. The Göhner fitted kitchens are carpentered extensions of the combination sinks of the forties. The technical and formal characteristics of later standardized construction kit systems are significantly absent. In the sixties, Göhner moved on to combining the parts of a home linked to the plumbing, like the bathroom, kitchen, and wc, into the ground plans and to prefabricating these as identical types. Göhner fitted kitchens with integrated cooker and refrigerator resemble

28–32 Serial manufacturing: photographs of the Therma plant in Schwanden, Canton of Glarus, early 1960s.

106

Therma fitted kitchens so much that they are hard to distinguish from each other.24 Controversial Norms The custom of fitting new buildings with ready-to-use kitchens led, earlier in Switzerland than in other European countries, to an increasing need for fitted kitchens. The Swiss Measurement System was dubbed a European pioneer achievement by Swiss kitchen manufacturers.25 Switzerland was the first European country to have access to clear regulations of how a fitted kitchen was to be built. But what did the situation look like regarding norm and fitted kitchens at the end of the fifties or beginning of the sixties elsewhere, for example in Germany? There could not have been a norm in the sense of a construction grid like the SINK norm. In 1967, Switzerland introduced its norm to the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die Moderne Küche, AMK [The Modern Kitchen Alliance] and recommended that it adopt the norm. But German manufacturers did not want to, preferring the 6M planning module (60 cm, or 23.6 in).26 This opened up a debate about the correct unit width. It is wrong to assume that standardization was accepted without criticism. There may have been talk of the norm’s “voluntary adoption”27 by the kitchen industry, yet it was questioned from different sides. The main point of criticism was and still is the 55 cm width of the niche, which did not comply with the general construction model.28 At the same time, manufacturers and architects were disturbed by the preference for appliances with a width of 55 cm – in other words, for products manufactured in Switzerland. The debate between advocates of the 55 cm and those for an ISO norm of 60 cm led to a real dispute about norms that climaxed in the eighties. This amounted to a split of the then Kitchen Association and the establishment of a cartel commission, which considered a violation in this regard to be a breach of cartel law. In the mid-seventies, the VSFE, or Verband der Schweizer Fabrikanten von Einbauküchen [Association of Swiss Fitted Kitchen Manufacturers], developed out of the SINK. Members of the VSFE, companies such as Forster, Franke, or Therma, produced in accordance with SINK dimensions. In 1983, a second kitchen association split of from this. The VFMK, or Verband zur Förderung der Modernen Küche [Association for the Promotion of the Modern Kitchen], clearly distanced itself from the Swiss norm and took up contact with importers of kitchens and appliances. It kept the discussion on norms and cartel violations going. In the course of the European harmonization of norms in the mid-nineties, the two opposing parties reunited in 2000 into a single association, the KVS, or Küchen-Verband Schweiz [Swiss Kitchen Association]. Today there is an open and pragmatic attitude regarding European or Swiss norms. There was a different climate regarding this in the eighties. In 1989, the cartel commission had to deal with the SINK norm as an obstacle to trade. The commission came to the conclusion29 that the SINK norm might disadvantage foreign manufacturers over Swiss manufacturers due to the different width, but justified this fact with a variety of arguments. The SINK norm regulated the definitive use of kitchen appliances and guaranteed compatibility independent of brand. This, however, is not the case with foreign norms, since it is 107

really an issue of company norms, which again make compatibility between individual brands impossible. In addition, the SINK norm is older then the ISO or DIN norms; and for this reason, it could not have been issue of intentional disadvantage within a comprehensive norm. The commission’s letter to the Kitchen Association argued that European harmonization should comply with Switzerland. European Kitchen Dimensions In 1995, with the EN 1116, a European norm (EN) for kitchen furniture and appliances30 came into being. This norm received the status of Schweizer Norm (SN) from the SNV, or Schweizerische Normen-Vereinigung (Swiss Norms Union). At the same time the Swiss Measurement System SMS [previously SINK] was not designated as a recognized Swiss norm, but rather a national practice of the kitchen and appliance industry. Thus, since 1996, there have been two “official” measurement systems. SMS and norm SN EN 1116. The European basis of SN EN 1116 “kitchen furniture” was developed between 1990 and 1995 by the kitchen and appliance industry in the Comité Européen pour la Normalisation [European Committee for Standardization]. The previous German “kitchen furniture” DIN norm 68901 served as the basis for this. The furniture’s outer dimension generally followed a 10 cm grid. A second more fundamental difference to the Swiss system was the fact that fitted appliances were installed into an appliance cabinet and not inserted between the flanking cabinets. In 60 cm wide built-in appliance-furniture, the width of the fitted opening for the appliance was about 56 cm. So much for the relative width of 60 cm. However, widths of 50 to 90 cm are also common. For the height, different dimensions of 10 cm unit intervals are possible. A comparison between the European system and the SMS immediately shows how clear and simple the latter is.31 DIN and ISO, vehemently attacked in the eighties as “international inadequacies,” found their official admission into the Swiss kitchen in 1996. Due to the Free Trade Agreement, the Swiss market is now open to kitchen furniture and appliances. Both norms exist side by side on the competitive free market. In 2001 kitchen furniture based on the SMS had a share of one third of the market. It is hard to imagine the land of the tenant without the fitted kitchen. Considering the fixtures, which are mostly not very aesthetically convincing, it seems of little relevance which norm will win the race.

108

Fitted kitchens as the new standard from the 1960s on: 33 Unpretentiously designed fitted kitchens in which a large part of the population still feels at home today. 34 Kitchen with refrigerator, freezer, cooker with oven and ventilator hood, 1962. As this example shows, norm and dimensional stability were, from the beginning, measurements that were often individually interpreted. The Swiss were the exception.

109

1 Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home. Or, Principles of Domestic Science (New York: Ford, 1869). 2 On the subject of organization and technical modernization of the household, see Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping. Efficiency Studies in Home Management (New York, 1913), and Christine Frederick, Household Engineering. Scientific Management in the Home (Chicago, 1919). Irene M. Witte translated Christine Frederick’s writings into German and published them as Heim und Technik in Amerika in 1928 in Berlin. Erna Meyer wrote a further instruction book on kitchen reform titled Der neue Haushalt. Ein Wegweiser zu wirtschaftlicher Hausführung, which in 1929 went into its thirty-eighth printing. 3 Therma advertisement, 1953. 4 Das Ideale Heim 24 (5 May 1950): 209. 5 Leben, Wohnen im Geist der Zeit (Winterthur, 1961): 78. 6 AEG advertisement, 1950s. 7 Das Ideale Heim 24 (5 May 1950): 209. 8 See Hans Neuburg, “Einheit von Funktion, Konstruktion, Formgebung und Information,” Neue Grafik 15 (1963): 2–38. 9 See my unpublished M. A. thesis “Hans Hilfiker – Annäherung an einen Gestalter,” submitted to Prof. S. von Moos, Institute of Art History, University of Zurich, 1993. 10 Discussion with Hans Hilfiker, 3 September 1991. 11 Hans Hilfiker, Apparateindustrie und Küchenbau. Nach einem Referat von Dipl. Ing. H. Hilfiker, Schwanden, an der Jahrestagung des CECED, Conseil Européen de la construction électro-domestique, vom 27. Juni 1967 in Montreux (Schwanden: Therma AG, n.d.). 12 The source material of today’s KVS (Schweizer Küchen-Verband) does not go back to the early days. Even Hans Hilfiker was not able to comment clearly on this, nor Peter Röthlin, KVS’s long-time manager. 13 Letter from the VSFE to the Bundesamt für Aussenwirtschaft (Federal Foreign Trade Office), 22 October, 1986, KVS archive. 14 Hans Hilfiker, Apparateindustrie und Küchenbau. 15 Ibid. 16 In a statement by Peter Röthlin, former manager of KVS March 2005. 17 From a discussion with Samuel Strahm, commercial sales manager for construction, Electrolux AG (Switzerland), 1 January 2005. 18 “Vom Einzelapparat zur ganzheitlich im Baukastenprinzip geplanten Küche,” interview with Hans Hilfiker, Betriebsführung 65/30, no. 7 (July 1965): 193–197. 19 Hans Hilfiker, “Kühlschrankbau auf neuen Wegen,” Electro-Revue 57, no. 26 (1965): 1302–1304. 20 See Therma Jahresbericht 69/1975, 3ff. 21 Angelus Eisinger, Städte bauen. Städtebau und Stadtentwicklung in der Schweiz 1940–1970 (Zurich: gta, 2004): 228ff. 22 See the “Gute Form” Archive, Design Collection, Museum of Design Zurich, as well as Peter Erni, Die gute Form: Eine Aktion des Schweizerischen Werkbundes. Dokumentation und Interpretationen (Baden: LIT Lars Müller, 1983). 23 Ernst Göhner AG, ed., Göhner Normen (Basel, 1950): 221ff. 24 Sigmund Widmer, Ernst Göhner (1900–1971): Bauen in Norm (Meilen, Switzerland: Verein für wirtschaftshistorische Studien, 2000. Schweizer Pioniere der Wirtschaft und Technik 49), 66–67. 25 Wieviel Küche braucht der Mensch? Eine Trendstudie der Schweizer Küchenbauer zur Standortbestimmung der Küche und ihrem zukünftigen Stellenwert, 1982, KVS archive. 26 Statement by Peter Röthlin, former manager of KVS, March 2005. – Germany first implemented a comprehensive norm at the beginning of the seventies: the first DIN 68901 norm, “Kücheneinrichtungen – Koordinierungsmasse für Küchenmöbel und Küchengeräte,” has January 1973 as date of issue. Further editions: DIN 68901:1981–11, 1986–01. European standardization followed 1986–01 (EN or DIN EN). DIN 68901:1986–01 became DIN 68901:1995–12; the current version is DIN EN 1116:2004–09. There are additional DINs or EN DINs for safety regulations of kitchen fittings (furniture, appliances, shelves, work surfaces, etc.). 27 KVS files on the Swiss Measurement System SMS, Oktober 1996, KVS archive. 28 The trade journal Die Küche. Planen und Gestalten gave insight into this discussion in the sixties. 29 Cartel commission letter to the Verband der Schweizerischen Küchenbranche, 13 December 1989, KVS archive. 30 The following statements were taken from Küchenmöbel – Koordinationsmasse für Küchenmöbel und Küchengeräte SN EN 1116, ed. Schweizerische Normen-Vereinigung SNV (Winterthur, 1996). 31 Bruno Zuppiger, Masskoordination in der Küche: Der Stand im Jahr 2001, typescript, 2 December 2000, KVS archive.

110

Brigitte Kesselring

From Restrictive Norms to Greater Freedom Kitchen Planning Today

It would actually be easy. The most important factors relevant for the planning of a kitchen and its layout in the floor plan can be specified using good common sense: 1. The budget 2. The floor plan and the location of the floor plan within the apartment/house 3. The current offer of products 4. Ergonomics and the work processes in the kitchen 5. The individual needs of the users Yet upon a closer look, the meaning of “actually” in the first sentence can be comprehended as: it would be easy, if the kitchen were not such a complex thing and the human factor were not equally as complex.

Upscale contemporary kitchens have long been liberated from the corset of standardized layout models, and are distinguished by their formal clarity and high-grade materials (2003, Poggenpohl).

The Special Status of the Kitchen The kitchen assumes a special status because its meaning is ambivalent from the beginning. In German the word Küche can imply either the room, the equipment, or “cuisine.” All of these facets play a role in planning a kitchen: The kitchen as a room and equipment is the framework in which the art of cooking is applied or celebrated. This kitchen as a whole, as equipment and philosophy, is closely related to the technical changes and developments in materials and furnishings on the one hand, and to the re-appraisal of values in culture and society on the other. According to the zeitgeist and its relative importance, kitchen planning is carried out in line with function, lifestyle, experience, as well as social and status-oriented concerns. In the following essay, the term “kitchen” will be always understood as the room and its furniture, including appliance furnishings. The kitchen assumes a special status within the apartment or house because, contrary to all other rooms – except the bathroom/ wc – it is not a freely definable living space, but is closely linked to the building services and entire mains network. Thus the supply and disposal of water, electrical connections, gas, heating, and ventilation systems are part of the basic planning from the beginning. Designing the kitchen is thus of central planning importance in the development of the entire ground plan and architectural concept. 113

1–2 Kitchen planning yesterday and today: the playful, haptic qualities of this cardboard-and-glue model from the 1970s have been replaced today by computergenerated views that with a click of the mouse can be altered to create a new variant of the desired end-product.

Another special feature affects Switzerland: traditionally, complete kitchen furnishings including all appliances are part of a rented apartment. As early as the fifties this had consequences on the development of authoritative norms, since in the course of growing industrial production, manufacturers of furniture and appliance were dependent on a coordinated system of dimensions.1 There are other basic conditions in this so-called rental segment than in private housing architecture. Thus, investors, developers, and decorators are more conservative and reserved when it comes to converting to new residential forms and apartment furnishings: safe, measurable values, cost and usage ratios, experience, durability, and rate of return are considerations that have priority. Buildings are constructed for anonymous users, the decision makers will not live in those apartments. Private construction, meaning single-family houses and condominiums, however, is informed by individual values and attitudes, individual needs and demands, because the decision maker is also the user. Respectively, other standards and requirements have to be taken into consideration during the planning. In Switzerland’s neighboring countries, for example in Germany or Austria, the kitchen is an arrangement like any other, and is – regardless whether it is a rented apartment, condominium, or private home – purchased individually. The kitchen here is subject far more to the pressures of marketing and consumption, since manufacturers have to advertise to win the favor of a broad consumer base. That only works if there is an attractive offer: attractive regarding modern appearance and affordable prices in the rental sector; at the luxury level, appearance, quality, and market image matter. The kitchen also has a short life span in the rental segment. It will not be used forever and, in Switzerland at least, it is not designed according to quality standards to last for decades. Kitchen parts complete with appliance furnishings, so-called kitchen blocks, are offered in this segment by trade markets or the do-it-yourself track. There are thus very different standards at the quality and planning level in these markets. Minimum standards at the lower price level and, as in the Swiss market, high standards in the luxury segment. The Human Being as a Factor of Influence Looking for the important factors relevant for the planning of a kitchen and its arrangement in the floor plan, the human ultimately proves to be a central factor of influence: kitchen furniture is not a “one-stop” product, but a complex system with numerous responsibilities.

1. The kitchen is a central part of the entire home concept and has to be considered during the development of the floor plan. As a rule this is one of the architect’s responsibilities. 2. The kitchen is not an arrangement that can be placed freely or at will, but part of a building’s services and firmly linked to the entire installation network (water, electricity, gas, ventilation, etc.). The architect and building planner are responsible for placement and the type of connections. The connections themselves are subject to their own norms, in some cases, also official regulations. 114

3. The kitchen consists of furniture elements and appliances that are combined or assembled and, therefore, their dimensions have to correspond. As a rule, they are industrially manufactured. This is the responsibility of the Kitchen engineers (furniture) and appliance manufacturers, as well as associations, other higher institutions, and legislators. The technical detail planning is as a rule carried out by the kitchen technician. 4. The kitchen is individual, its basic composition is defined in detail by the developers. The architect or interior architect, the kitchen sales staff, appliance sales staff, the kitchen planner and/or the kitchen technician, and often combinations thereof, are responsible for this. 5. The central function of the kitchen is cooking. Cooking is a craft, a culture, it can be a hobby or a profession, a necessary evil or daily ritual, a lonely procedure or social event. The users and planners are responsible for anchoring these in the kitchen plan. 6. The kitchen is a multi-functional room, is a work place, home, and living space at once, and this for either many or one person. The relative importance of the kitchen is influenced by individualism, family, family size, society, and culture. The kitchen is used in daily life by the user. The requirements are constructed by the developer. Another concept develops according to how attitudes regarding living, the kitchen, and cooking are understood and how interesting they are. There are also ergonomic, planning, technical, and standards issues, budget limitations, and experience, all of which have 3 A continuous work surface frames this generous kitchen ensemble.

115

played a more or less unchanged role in kitchen planning for decades. Some of these are in a state of transition, as basic conditions and demands have changed. These include the growing dimension of people themselves, which has long affected the strictly defined work height, or new cooking practices and methods, which have questioned traditional standard kitchen equipment or set other points of focus in the work procedure. In order to gain a current insight into common principles as well as general valid basic regulations and changes, effective standards were established. Secondly, various specialists integrated in the planning process were questioned about current trends and problems in kitchen planning. Standards A different understanding of the woman’s role was a triggering factor in the twenties, as well as a new lifestyle resulting from the development of low-cost housing, the rationalization of kitchen procedures, and kitchen planning. Yet today it is new cooking practices, equipment technology, changed family structures, lifestyle, and nutritional habits which influence the kitchen plan. In 1926 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky developed the “Frankfurt Kitchen”. Standardized, reduced to 65 sq. ft., and absolutely function-oriented, it became the symbol of modern kitchen planning. In comparison, today’s modern kitchen construction is distributed over a larger area, is generous in individuality and function, and is cut with sensory comforts in mind. Both are based on an optimized work procedure, yet they are divided by eighty years of norm developments, standardization, and revolutionary developments in household technology, home appliances, small appliances, materials, and in the entire purchasing and food area. In the fifties and sixties – as a result of industrial production – different, more or less authoritive regulations or norm systems were created for the kitchen.2 In Switzerland, furniture and appliance fitting dimensions were coordinated early on and defined by a general grid width and height (the SINK norm, today SMS).3 In other European countries, unified width dimensions were established (the Euro norm, which is based on a 60 cm grid width); and height partitioning, and fitting dimensions are, even today, largely subject to manufacturer-specific norms or recommendations. One of the reasons for this is the fact that in Germany, for example, kitchen manufacturers often integrate single appliance brands firmly in their product range. Secondly, appliance manufacturers like Bosch or Miele have become kitchen suppliers themselves. In the planning area, harmonious minimum standards were defined and oriented to the work rhythm in the kitchen (adjusted for right- or left-handed persons). Today, the zones are divided into the following function centers:

Stock Storage Sink area Preparation area Cooking and baking

116

From standardized and minimal to free and open: 4–5 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s “Frankfurt Kitchen”; the kitchen for a household without domestic help, exhibited in 1927 as a model kitchen in the Neuzeitliche Haushalt [Modern Household] exhibition in Frankfurt am Main. Layout with path diagram; view. 6 The kitchen as an assemblage of freely combinable elements for a loft-style apartment. High-grade workmanship with matte-finished fronts, panelled shelving, and chrome trim (2005, the Esprit model from the Syle series, Sanitas Troesch).

7 A kitchen design that optimally conforms to the workflow saves time and energy. Below, an optimized configuration subdivided into work centers according to the Dynamic Space ® concept (2003, Blum).

117

Kitchen Types The kitchen is typologized according to standard floor plans that have existed since the first norms and which are today seen as “classic” solutions. These are based on optimal work procedures via the logical position and sequence of the individual function centers, as well as a defined minimum gap between these individual zones.

8

Single-Wall Kitchen: all functions in the smallest space; linear workflow. Surface area: approx. 65 sq. ft. Suitable for small households of three persons or less.

9

Galley or Corridor Kitchen: Compact design solution with additional work surface, minimum dimensions of 2 x 4 x 2 ft. (depth of cabinets x traffic area x depth of cabinets). Short work paths and lots of storage space. Surface area: approx. 86 sq. ft.

10

L-Shaped Kitchen: very popular and widespread kitchen type with a functional, ergonomic arrangement. The work centers are arranged in terms of function and sequence. Surface area: approx. 86–108 sq. ft.; with dining area: 108 sq. ft. min.

11

U-Shaped Kitchen: the basic plan for luxury kitchens in the private home segment, generously equipped with furniture and appliances. Surface area: approx. 108–130 sq. ft.

12

G-Shaped Kitchen: this development of the U-Shaped type is a popular standard of live-in kitchens either wholly or partially open to the living area. Surface area: approx. 130–150 sq. ft.

13

Island Kitchen: the foundation of modern kitchen designs, with separate cooking island, appliances, and work area on one wall, and storage area. Installing plumbing and ventilation for the island can be tough. Surface area: 161 sq. ft. min.

118

These basic types are to really be understood as minimum standards, which should always be open to changes and new philosophies over time. Unfortunately this is rarely the case, and they are far too often installed on a 1:1 basis. At the beginning of the eighties, Otl Aicher caused a mini revolution when he approached planning from an entirely different angle, by making a trend survey commissioned by the German kitchen manufacturer Bulthaup, and by his own intense personal involvement in the subject. He went to professionals, housewives, and restaurant cooks, interviewed and observed them, and developed from this The Kitchen for Cooking.4 This was not just meant for the right organization of work and the right tools in the kitchen, but also the fun of this work, the joy of cooking. A new quality, which paved the way for emotions and individual practices, for possibilities of change and development. The focal point of his kitchen is a work table, a kitchen island where one could work in a standing position, and where two or three people could work and communicate at an equipped and ordered workplace. Left of this is the sink and tableware area, to the right, provisions and supplies, refrigeration and oven, at the back, the cooker and cooker hood ventilator. Tasks are thereby limited to the central area around the preparation table. This “kitchen for cooking” can be realized with as little as 97 sq. ft. and

washing

cooking

94.3 sq. ft. storeroom L provisions

storeroom G

preparing countertops

cooking washing cleaning dishwashing

roasting refrigeration

storeroom L provisions

preparing

storeroom G dishes

16 Free-standing, freely combinable elements are the basis of Bulthaup’s system 20. Since 1992 the classic “kitchen workbench” has served as a control center for coordinating all other important work areas (2002, Bulthaup).

119

roasting refrigeration

countertops

14–15 Kitchen with cooking island after Otl Aicher, open to the living room. Two variants, one with the smallest possible surface area of nearly 100 sq. ft., the other with a more ample area of almost 130 sq. ft.

123.7 sq. ft.

today is still a good starting basis for the concept of an open largescale kitchen. Bulthaup developed a kitchen workbench which they presented – and have since modernized – in stainless steel in the system 20 product series. The transformed philosophy brought on by the discussion on cooking practices and tools, the orientation toward the professional sector and the inclusion of the user or several users triggered much, which now thirty years later, is just beginning to get established as a wider standard in the private sector. • Orientation toward the users work procedures and demands and his or her (cooking) practices • Orientation toward the professional sector, which sets the tone for the furniture, materials, equipment and cooking The kitchen in the rental segment remains oriented toward an average of the familiar standards. Storage Space and Ergonomics The new relative importance of the kitchen and cooking, a new outlook on habitation, and the opening of the kitchen into the living space have made the idea of storage a central issue over the past few years. For decades the need to maximize storage had kitchen furniture rising to the ceiling. The more design and lifestyle values became a priority, the more the volume of massive cabinets were placed in question. Yet where to put the pots, pans, and dishes, cutlery, tools, small appliances, and other various assorted goods? In 1998/99, Julius Blum GmbH in Austria tackled the issue and commissioned the Institut für Ökotrophologie [Institute of Domestic Science] in Kranzberg (D) to perform a study that would establish a household’s need for storage. On this basis, a so-called

17 A kitchen planned and equipped in terms of kitchen zones saves time and 25 percent of workflow (2003, Dynamic Space ®, Blum). 18 Full extension inner pull-outs make optimal use of space, provide easy access, and a complete overview of contents (2003, Dynamic Space ®, Blum).

120

“storage planner” was developed, which could be used to ascertain individual space requirements in a number of trays, pull-outs, and drawers.5 Further developments in cabinet design have led to a much higher level of usability in recent years. Instead of maximizing storage by using as many cabinets as possible, today the issue is how to most intelligently use and organize the units themselves. The results are significant: as Blum’s studies reveal, as much as 55 per cent more storage space can be gained via pull-out with higher back and side walls. This, and sophisticated dividing systems can put an end to untidy chaos and create more space. Ergonomics has played a central role here, but this involves more than optimizing common work procedures in terms of work paths. This wider spectrum is expressed in work heights differentiated by task, different supply levels that are equipped according to frequency of use, and greater possibilities of oversight and access. None of these issues is new, but our awareness of them can be renewed. Mainly the work-height, which is standardized at just under three feet, is now adapted to the user and often to specific tasks in individualized kitchen construction. Due to human’s increased height, there is an effort being made to raise even standard dimensions (recommendations in the context of various norms systems). A basic rule applied to establish individual dimensions: in a comfortable, upright position, bend the arm 90° and measure the distance to the floor; subtract six inches, and the correct work-height is established. If several cooks are cooking in the same kitchen, use their average distance to the floor. AMK’s6 ergonomics planner is also a useful basis for determining the optimal access height of top cupboards. Work surfaces are located between the preparation/sink area and the cooking area, and according to current guidelines should be at least 23 in. wide. Cooks appreciate every extra inch and found a minimum dimension of 40 in. ideal. Work-depth plays a role here as well: with deeper surfaces of 29 or 32 in. (standard = 24 in.), work can be shifted to the back; this saves space and saves having to step to the left or right. A welcome side effect, the increased depth allows for more storage in the cabinets below and more headroom under overhead cabinets (if available). Since most households began installing dishwashing machines, the sink has evolved into a preparation area or been reduced to a single, large basin. The user will opt for the one or the other tendency depending on his or her philosophy. In numerous models the fittings, with their standard curved, high-spout faucets, display the functional and formal qualities of a professional kitchen. The high faucets have pull-out heads, and with long handles rather than rotary knobs they are easy to use. The waste disposal system below is available both with and without a waste-separation function. The garbage bags should be fillable to capacity and without obstruction. Provided there is enough room, it is better to install the waste disposal system beside the sink rather than under it. With the further optimization of kitchen work in mind, the Julius Blum GmbH – like Christine Frederick7 before them – recently conducted a line study of work processes in a modern kitchen spread out throughout the day or over the course of a week. The results showed the paths, time, and strains on the human body in stooping, reaching, turning, putting away, and clearing space. These 121

were analyzed and compiled into a total concept for modern kitchen design under the term Dynamic Space. The most important principles of such design are: • Include sufficient storage space (based on demand assessment and checklists) • Plan the kitchen in terms of five zones (stock, storage, sink area, preparation area, cooking/baking) • Avoid doors in lower cupboards (drawers and pull-outs obviate unnecessary stooping and clearing) • Include fully extendable pull-outs (these provide unrestricted overview and access) Bulk supplies should be stored with their specific purposes in mind. By organizing these five function zones according to lifestyle and household dimensions, each individual zone can be furnished and be functional as a work center of the “shortest possible work paths.” Current Aims and Tendencies In accord with its growing significance, the kitchen is increasingly being situated in a preferred location within the floor plan and no longer banished to the nether regions. Views and relation to the rest

19 Deeper working surfaces allow one to work further back or to install a depot deck with extra storage space (2003, Sanitas Troesch). 20 The system 20 water source is designed for ergonomic cleaning and preparation, even in terms of its material. Stainless steel is both hygienic and a classic in day-to-day kitchen life (2003, Bulthaup). 21 The stainless steel fittings are based on those used by professionals and allow for more functional rinsing, preparing, and cooking (2004, Kludi). 22 The Eisinger Block program consists of different work blocks that can be combined to create an entire kitchen or installed individually to supplement an existing one. This washing-preparation block contains a dishwashing machine and a KEA Motion 600 waste separation system (2004, Franke).

122

of the interior and exterior and the integration in the home environment have become important planning factors. Making the kitchen into a living space requires a new living quality from arrangement of the home and its total concept. Pull-outs that extend gently and quietly and close on their own, or noise-absorbing buffers on the doors are marks of a new comfort level for furniture. Noise reduction is an important issue for furniture and appliances. The lighting concept of a room today needs to take into account both functional and atmospheric lighting modes. Modern lighting systems, mini fluorescent tubes, or halogen light systems, produce white, glare-free light where it is needed, and the ambience of the room is showcased. Voluminous cabinets are built into the wall and appear as a seamless surface; massive wall units give way to transparent glass panels, and the ceramic tiles in the typical Swiss niche have long been replaced by glass or other plain surfaces. Today’s kitchen usually has more than one cook in it, and ergonomics plays an enormous role. Ovens at eye-level, dishwashers installed at a more comfortable height or in upper drawers, refrigerators with individually defined cooling zones, waste disposals with functional separation systems, and new features under the sink have displaced earlier basic elements of kitchen design. In the cooking area, burners arranged in a row are far more functional than the tra-

23 These integrated dishwashing drawers can be installed individually, either on top or next to each other, depending on individual needs. The ergonomic positioning prevents irritating stooping (2004, Bauknecht). 24 Blumotion is a concealed built-in technology that allows drawers, pull-outs, and cabinet doors to be closed quietly and easily, with perfect movement (2002, Blum). 25 By combining the chassis with the wall unit, the Slide system redefines the hutch. The glass panels can be shifted sideways (2005, Leicht).

123

ditional square. Fixed shelves will no longer be welcome in lower cupboards. Cooking and consumption habits have changed, and this goes for appliance technologies and materials, too. A growing consciousness of healthiness and “freshness” in produce and foodstuffs on the one hand, and increasingly sophisticated menus on the other have transformed cooking and our attitudes toward it. Likewise, with travel to far-away lands becoming more common, entirely different cuisines have been discovered. The introduction of the wok to the European kitchen is just one example of this. Following the microwave, high-pressure steamers are becoming increasingly popular and are finding their way into standard kitchens. Cooking is being shifted more and more from the stovetop to the steamer, which leaves nutrients intact and guarantees perfectly cooked food in very short time. In return the demand for hygienic, functional preparation areas and surfaces is increasing. A further development affects things that must be stored in the kitchen: tools, pans, knives, cutlery, dishes, and other devices and utensils. The earlier propensity to hoard and collect is increasingly giving way to clearing out. Concentrating on what is really needed and disposing with unnecessary ballast will affect kitchens, too. The quantity and design of storage spaces are constantly being altered.

26 Induction cooking is a professional feature. By way of induction coils, the heat is produced directly in the pan and the cooking surface remains cool. This technology allows for quick, reliable cooking at very fine degrees of temperature (2003, V-Zug). 27 Asian cuisine has transformed everyday life in the European kitchen. Here the induction field has been shaped for a wok (2004, Electrolux). 28 Cooking with steam can be done with low or high pressure. The Imperial Steamer is the classic high-pressure machine (2003, Miele).

124

Practical Viewpoints Only actual praxis can show to what degree individual ideas, design concepts, and theoretical demands can be combined. For this reason, I have interviewed a number of kitchen design specialists. Their responses demonstrate how different occupations foreground different aspects, which should all ideally be combined in practice.

The Architect: Martin Lanz, architect ETH/SIA8 “The spatial organization of kitchen, dining, and living space is of central importance in floor plan development. Living space has become a spatial experience in the last few years. Since the early eighties, room units have been unified and become interchangeable. Detail planning develops from the form of the room.”

29–30 Kitchen with open entry to the living room (Meyer, Moser, Lanz Architekten, Zurich): Floorplan; view.

The Interior Architect and Designer: Kurt Greter, interior architect VSI/SDA9 “The kitchen and dining area together create the core of the home. The kitchen stands for warmth, spending time together, enjoyment, handiwork, recreation, and relaxation. It is a workshop that each user comes to with his or her own needs and requirements. The whole process of shopping, storing, serving, refrigerating, and stocking food has been a stepchild of design. To that extent locating the kitchen near the entryway plays an important role: entry, cooking, serving can quite easily be combined into a unity.”

31–32 Open kitchen in an attic apartment (Entwurfsatelier Kurt Greter, Zurich): Floor plan (1 entry, 2 cloakroom, 3 kitchen, 4 serving area, 5 washing/work room, 6 dining, 7 living); view.

125

33–34 Kitchen island with a concrete work surface combined with steel furniture in colors from the color collection (2005, Forster): View; floor plan.

The Architect and Product Manager: Sara Kräuchi, architect FH10 Architect specifications are often so defined that the manufacturer is left only with the details of executing them. Architectural planning is often given over to draftspersons who simply follow current standards: the Swiss Norm Association, Neufert, the SMS system. You can see from the plan whether the kitchen was designed with passion or simply according to these general guidelines. Materials that serve both function and design play an important role: steel, chrome, granite (depending on the porosity), cement, artificial stone, and glass all fulfill hygienic and aesthetic requirements.”

The Kitchen Specialist: Thomas Wiesmann11 “The most important factor in designing a kitchen is being able to listen: the client, the user, and his or her needs are the crucial things. Not everyone can cook in all kitchens, which is why I use an extensive questionnaire to find out what the client’s requirements are. These have developed considerably in the last twenty years, not least due to changes in household structure: we now have very mobile people who live and work in different places, others who are single but entertain guests frequently, and there has been a boom in the fifty-and-over generation. How many people will be cooking in the kitchen, whether a man or a woman will be the primary user, and what habits they have are all parameters that must be taken into account in the design concept.”

35–36 Ideal kitchen solution with a functional center joined to a kitchen island (2004, Wiesmann Küchen, Zurich): View; floor plan.

126

The Interior Design Draftsperson: Anna Wenger12 “The builders play a central role since they must decide whether they want an open or closed kitchen or whether to create a hybrid with sliding doors. Open kitchens, where you work facing the room and not the wall, are ideal. This way you can communicate with your guests or family while cooking and do not have to turn your back on them. Extra deep work surfaces are more comfortable and also quite important. It is important to have sufficient space between the stove and the sink, where the major part of preparation takes place.”

37 The voluminous provisions and utensil cabinets are set in a frame and together with the special kitchen island take on living room character (2004, Sanitas Troesch).

The Kitchen Engineer: Peter Hausheer13 “What is crucial is the development and execution of the most widely applicable standards and guidelines for an ergonomic, functional, and comfort-oriented kitchen plan and interior design. Ergonomics and traffic flow need to be taken into account more in the planning stages. Kitchen islands without plumbing make it necessary to find solutions and often require feats of engineering, for ventilation for example. What is clear is that while the number of appliances in kitchens has increased and furniture has decreased, most errors are made in installing machines optimally according to workflow. Technical documentation from manufacturers are good sources of information.”

38 The Claro model is cut for perfect ergonomics. The cooking range and ventilator are height-adjustable (2005, Piatti).

127

So what? There are ergonomic, design, and engineering principles that have influenced kitchen design for decades. ➝ The execution of a design takes place more or less strictly, more or less creatively, and more or less practically and is dependent on the human being as a factor of influence.

Tried-and-true, praxis-oriented measurement systems make planning considerably easier. Particularly when combining furniture and appliances, appliance installation according to the SMS system is simple to plan and guarantees universality. Kitchen planning is quite individual. In designing a kitchen, cooking plays a role. ➝ Depending on who is designing the kitchen (architect, interior architect, kitchen engineer, designer, or developer), the same basic requirements for the same floor plan will produce different results. An exception to this is in standardized home building and the building of rental units. ➝ Someone who loves to cook will design a kitchen differently from someone who (only) loves to eat. Current systems of standards provide the foundations for planning standard kitchens. Technological developments, changes in values, new determining factors from the environments have little influence on these foundations and when they do it is after considerable delay. Individual know-how and the quality of the planner are decisive factors here. Otl Aicher commented in 1982 in the foreword to his book Die Küche zum Kochen [The Kitchen For Cooking]: “Designers who do not cook should not be let near kitchens.”14 The same thing should hold for planners. The value of the kitchen and of cooking as well as that of nutritional habits have a decisive influence on planning. ➝ The basic value of a kitchen is defined at the room layout stage. In the planning and designing of details, individual cooking and eating habits as well as aesthetics must play a decisive role. There is really nothing keeping a planner from following ergonomic principles: kitchen manufacturers and suppliers offer many versatile options for the actual execution of a kitchen plan, including fully extendable drawers and pull-outs, height-adjustable bases, wider openings for doors, and diverse types of furniture and organization systems. In practice, however, the fundamentals are often neglected, whether out of ignorance or because budget or aesthetics are given preference. That is when people forget that the kitchen is a workshop, to be used day in, day out and over the course of decades.

128

1 See Christina Sonderegger’s essay in this volume. 2 The Bauentwurfslehre by Ernst Neufert (1900–1986), first published in 1936 and available in English as Architects’ Data, set the trend here in many ways. It was an epochal work and is still referenced today in every architectural office to verify room dimensions. See also: Walter Prigge, ed., Ernst Neufert: Normierte Baukultur im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1999). 3 The SINK norm, based on a grid width of 55 cm. and a height partition of 1/6th, was developed in the sixties and was then adopted by the entire industry. The first signs of standardization can be found as early as the thirties (in the dimension harmonization of gas appliances). In 1996, it was renamed SMS (Schweitzer Mass System, or Swiss Measurement System) without any changes to its technical contents. See also Christina Sonderegger’s essay in this volume. 4 Otl Aicher, Die Küche zum Kochen: Das Ende einer Architekturdoktrin (Munich: Callwey, 1982). The publication is based on comprehensive studies developed for Bulthaup, but at the same time also on Aicher’s own passion for cooking. 5 For details, see http://www.blum.com, or http://www.dynamicspace.com (accessed 31 May 2005). 6 For more information about the ergonomics planner see http://www.amk.de (accessed 31 May 2005). 7 Frederick, whose numerous publications at the beginning of the twentieth century were a decisive force for rationalizing the household, conducted a kind of line study in 1922 to research traffic paths for different arrangements of kitchen furniture. See Eva Scheid, “Heim und Technik in Amerika,” in Oikos: Von der Feuerstelle zur Mikrowelle. Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel, ed. Michael Andritzky (Giessen: Anabas, 1992): 86–92. 8 Martin Lanz, Architect ETH/SIA, Meyer, Moser, Lanz Architekten AG, Zurich. Specialization: new construction and renovation in all property segments. 9 Kurt Greter, Interior Architect VSI/SDA, Entwurfsatelier Kurt Greter, Zurich. Specialization: architecture/interior architecture, office planning, furniture design. 10 Sara Kräuchi, Architect FH, Product Manager and Exhibition Planner, Forster Küchen, Arbon, Switzerland. Specialization: exhibition planning, kitchen design, and product development. 11 Thomas Wiesmann, proprietor, Thomas Wiesmann Küchenstudio, Zurich. Specialization: individual kitchens in the luxury segment. 12 Anna Wenger, interior design draftsperson, kitchen and exhibition planner, Sanitas Troesch AG, Bern. 13 Peter Hausheer, Director of Product Technology, Bruno Piatti AG, Dietlikon, Switzerland. Specialization: product development, training of engineers and planners, member of the Engineering Board, Swiss Kitchen Assocation (KVS). 14 Aicher, Die Küche zum Kochen, 6.

129

Marion von Osten

Ghostly Silence The Unemployed Kitchen

Advertisement for Electrolux refrigerators, 1951 (France).

Whatever happened to those silvery worlds where seductive, smiling models with perfectly polished nails softly pressed the buttons on the dishwasher or where thirty-something token men in aprons enjoyed a glass of red wine with their girlfriends while cooking together? Whatever happened to those worlds of images that once advertised a new, rational, yet comfortable, large-family-style domesticity that nevertheless bristled with the sex appeal of single life and on every corner proclaimed the new joys of cooking, the perfect hobby for both men and women? These feel-good kitchen figures have disappeared from the image worlds that once graced the pages of trade magazines. In their place have come multi-media walls, mobile telephones, and flat screens with relaxed people consuming or communicating with or in front of them. The new kitchen, with its weekend warriors fiddling with pots and pans like sous-chefs, brandishing knives like butchers, and abusing the chopping block – while under a cloud of steam the size of a cafeteria kitchen the consommé simmers away – has left us. As a private detective of kitchen imagery I would like to be able to discern a system here, because the modern kitchen has a very special (visual) history of suddenly appearing and then just as unexpectedly going away. If at first there were only occasional, oddly mechanized, and isolated household machines slowly but surely enlarging the archive of Sigfried Giedion at ETH Zurich, these were quickly replaced by innovatively designed and practical single appliances operated by increasingly cheerful homemakers – appliances that with time found their way into design collections in museums, scrap heaps in unincorporated areas, or lots in flea markets. For by now the kitchen was being sold as the classic ensemble, an indivisible unity whose functionality was spruced up for the especially successful housewife-family in the form of the live-in kitchen, the kitchen bar, and eventually the omnipresent fitted kitchen. For the time being, the kitchen’s final incarnation in this chain of iconogenesis is the now well-known professional kitchen for home use – a space for spending free time and leisure, rather than work, that is not only capable of being attractive to men, but is intended and permitted to be so, too.1 Even when diverse historical and contemporary appliances and kitchen designs continue to be supported and used and advertised in the high-grade kitchens shown in trade journals, it is more conspic131

1 High-grade, open, and sexy: the kitchen as a design investment for the svelte and trend-conscious “new moderns” of today.

uous than ever that the new communication technologies have now taken the lead and are supplanting the beautiful new image of the kitchen. Does this anti-kitchen trend in advertising result simply from shrewd business decisions being made in the upper echelons of multinational corporations and so-called “saturated markets”? Or can the disappearance of kitchens from our everyday image worlds be explained by those reports from the social sciences that indicate that the majority of people in the twenty-first century tend to avoid housework more than any other kind of work? In any case, this was the conclusion that Arlie Russell Hochschild came to in a study conducted in the nineties in the United States, according to which more and more white-collar men and women felt overwhelmed by their private life, i. e. cooking, household maintenance, their relationship, and child-care, while everyday life in the workplace was viewed as a well-organized structure in which, provided one behaved appropriately, one could count on recognition and personal advancement.2 It was a world that, unlike the home, seems to function; where there are equal opportunity laws in place; where you get promoted and have legal recourse against discrimination, etc. Even if this might be more promise than reality, the jargon of attentiveness to workers’ needs, an accomplishment of the workers’ movement, does not exist at 132

all in the home. People do not get promotions – not to mention year-end bonuses or guarantees against discrimination – for preparing meals, pushing the vacuum cleaner around, or changing diapers. Even to begin thinking about the kitchen as both workplace and employment relationship involves considering what value such work has in everyday life and how it has changed through history. Furthermore, kitchen labor – as various Bulthaup representations would have it – is inextricable not only from the histories of other forms of household labor, but from the fact that the kitchen played a central role in developing a certain image of femininity as a standard of modernity. It is for this reason, too, that housework has come to be perceived as a burden. The effort to abolish it has as long a tradition as does the effort to valorize it as woman’s “natural” workplace. As I would like to show, attempts at abolishing housework are, on the one hand, grounded in the rationalization and mechanization of the work process, in fantasies of total automation, and, on the other hand, in the gendered division of labor, as well as the spatial separation of the public and, private spheres and their differing social valuations. From a distance, the history of the rationalization and technologization of housework reads as strikingly as that of its disconcerting abolishment. The kitchen is thus invested with a very special significance, as a site for playing out various techno-fantasies that project as a reverse image the formal economy of gainful employment into the informal space of housework and family care.3 Furthermore, the unpaid labor at home and the serving, cooking for, and care of the husbands, children, and other family members has been viewed ever since the first women’s suffrage movement in the nineteenth century as the core mechanism in the oppression of servants and women. To free them of this burden remains a central aim of feminism and other emancipation movements. As in other areas of the work world, here, too, great store was set in the potential of technological innovation for resolving gender and class inequalities – a prospect that today has been refuted by numerous studies. For despite the high-tech kitchens and double-income households, up to ninety percent of housework is still done by women; and around the world it is increasingly being outsourced to people – primarily women – who are migrants or immigrants.4 2 L. Van Hoesen, Apple Parer and Slicer, 1855 (United States). 3 “The Packaged Kitchen,” 1940s. Original caption from the British Council: “‘Small Packet’ kitchen fitment for use in converted flats. These fitments are delivered in crates ready for assembly. When erected the fitment includes gas cooker, refrigeration, gas water heater, stainless steel sink and cupboard accommodation.”

133

But this fact, too, is disappearing, becoming invisible and losing its status as a political fact and prevalent image. In order to be able to comprehend these invisibles and visibles of the kitchen on the one hand and the activities that take place in it on the other, we need to look back at the history of its radical revaluation through mechanization, rationalization, and technologization, back to the time of the so-called “servant crisis,” when housework was to be redefined in terms of factory labor in order to both accelerate and reduce it. The Mechanical Bride According to Judy Wajcman5 the ideology of the “happy” nuclear family and the reduction of paid and unpaid household labor (unpaid workers generally included unmarried daughters, aunts, and grandparents) meant that the housewife was responsible for all the work – one of the most devastating changes in the organization of housework. The greatest reduction in household workers in uppermiddle-class families took place in the 1920s. This resulted from a process that began in the nineteenth century, when male servants were increasingly drawn into the industrial labor market and replaced by female servants in households. The “maid question” was presented in women’s magazines of the time as a moral issue, since it apparently called into question the stability and sanctity of the bourgeois home. On the other hand, the “maid question” quickly

4 Visually representing a repetitive work process by means of wire models: motion studies by Lilian M. and Frank B. Gilbreth, around 1912. 5 “Preparation, Restoration”: double-page spread from the Kitchen Planning brochure of the U.S. company Kitchen Maid, 1930.

134

became a political issue when socialists discovered household labor as a political subject. In fact, the reduction in numbers of paid and unpaid household workers can be explained by fundamental societal changes in capitalist societies by which the service economy of the nineteenth century was transformed in the circulatory system of socalled Fordism into a commodity-producing and -consuming society, in which all classes were to be integrated. According to contemporary theorists of technology and architecture, it was above all the disappearance of household employees that fueled the rationalization and technologization of housework. The mechanization of housework first took place in the United States and initially comprised cleaning procedures: the washing and ironing of clothes; the washing of dishes, carpets, and furniture; and from there to the mechanization of heating and cooling processes. In Europe, the onset of industrialization brought with it the transition from manual labor to mechanical labor and the first factories for mass-production. Automatized mechanisms were coordinated following scientific analyses, above all in order to synchronize them with the worker’s body. The reorganization and “optimizing of work procedures,” manifested in both the assembly line and the scientific mode of management (in the Taylorist system), were geared toward an acceleration of the workflow in order to achieve the production of more items in less time. It was believed that this accelera-

135

tion could be achieved by improving the organization of habitual work processes, by resequencing them according to rational principles, and disciplining the worker’s body with the appropriate training. Important advocates of this optimization doctrine were Frank and Lilian Gilbreth, who used photography to record motion and translated these studies into three-dimensional models that were then introduced into the training of workers in factories in order to “teach” them how to move more efficiently. The methods for developing this motion path model were applied by Lilian Gilbreth to the workflow in the kitchen and are used to this day in kitchen rationalization models. The mechanization of the household in the nineteenth century took place in the United States in conjunction with the women’s suffrage movement. One of the most important advocates of household rationalization was Catherine Beecher (1800–1878), who like many American social reformers around the time of the Civil War came from a family of New England Puritan preachers. Together with her sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Beecher wrote the textbook Domestic Economy. She advocated the professionalization of household activities and introduced the teaching of home economics as a scientific discipline. In another book written by the two sisters, The American Woman’s Home (1869), they write: “Every human being, [according to the Declaration of Independence], stands on the same natural level with every other . . . there are no hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes . . . [t]he condition of domestic service, however, still retains about it something of the influences from feudal times.”6 As Catherine Beecher understood it, the “burdens of the . . . housekeeper” were to be borne without butlers, maids, or slaves. The consequence of this was that housework was to be organized more efficiently. The comfort and privileges of the upper middle class and the patriarch were to be maintained. Marriage and housekeeping were still seen as desirable lifestyles, but a “combined labor model” would require new relations among family members. The deprivatization of housework and even the redefinition of the woman as an active public figure were, as various documents show, a strange, even repellent idea.7 Beecher imagined her chosen ideal, the American nuclear family, reorganized as a small, private “factory.” For the new democratic way of life brought on by the reorganization of housework and later by the development of increasingly sophisticated appliances would now make it possible to replace domestic servants, which included former African-American slaves. The housewife was to be the manager of this new, private factory, which would in turn professionalize housekeeping. The tenets of optimizing household management and the attempt to scientifically conceptualize housework eventually led to an architectural reorganization of the household as well, putting the modern housewife more and more at the center of her responsibilities. The results of motion and workflow studies conducted by the Gilbreths and other management scientists were converted into architectural models and designs that followed the principles of making housework more efficient and improving hygiene. In the 1920s in Europe, Social Democratic Germany saw the first “functional” designs of the New Building, such as, for instance, 136

Numerous publications and exhibits throughout Europe in the 1920s and 1930s were meant to inform a wider public about household rationalization. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s “Frankfurt Kitchen” served as the model for a great many ideal kitchens to come. Die praktische Küche [The practical kitchen] an exhibition at the Gewerbemuseum Basel [Basel Museum of Arts and Crafts], 9 February–16 March, 1930. 6 Kitchen by Rudolf Preiswerk. 7 Advertisement from the Basler Nachrichten 277 (1930). The drawing is based on the photograph of Rudolf Preiswerk’s kitchen.

J. J. P. Oud’s model kitchen design in the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart. The Viennese architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) was one of the first architects to consider the needs of gainfully employed and single women with families in her designs. Likewise beholden to functionalism, Schütte-Lihotzky sought to rethink the relationship of housework and family care to processes of industrialization and designed not only apartments for bachelor women, but daycare centers and the famous “Frankfurt Kitchen”. SchütteLihotzky was among those social reformers and architects who through optimized workflow in the household and improved design aimed to enable women to enter the working world and take part in the industrial production process.8 Schütte-Lihotzky’s exemplary “Frankfurt Kitchen” has been highly influential; and along with similar efforts by her male colleagues comprised a socio-technological project for reform. The “Frankfurt Kitchen” was a good example of the problem facing these attempts at an emancipatory design, which anticipated modern mass-housing projects. Shortening workflow paths did little to alleviate the situation of the housewife, who still had to conduct this work by herself, even when she was gainfully employed outside the home. Kitchen work continued to be professionalized and functionalized, and at the same time this gave rise to the idea that if it

were not managed rationally, it would be an unbearable “burden,” a “waste of time,” to be gotten over with as quickly as possible. The housewife was instructed to conduct herself in this rationalized kitchen with corresponding practicality, rationality, and knowledge. The “modern woman” had to keep her appliances in running order, was particularly expert in home economics, and possessed a functional, practical taste that had no patience for bric-a-brac, curlicues, and kitsch. Efficiency, directedness, and industry now were to be fully internalized. A bad conscience was the immediate response when she neglected to clean the windows as scheduled, wash the dishes immediately after dinner, or fail to perform optimally at both her job and housework without considerable effort. Although they attended to the image of an efficient, time-saving homemaker/employee, modern architectural social engineering entirely ignored the causes behind the gendered division of labor and traditional gender 137

relations in a single-income household, and thus in some ways ended up institutionalizing them spatially.9 Management scientists, architects, and engineers mechanized and, later, technologized the household in an effort to “rationalize away” the “vernacular” activities that took place in it, since these were seen as burdens and not “authentic labor” in terms of an industrial society. As everyone knows, housework itself was by no means done away with. The attempt to abolish or accelerate certain activities is subject to what Foucault describes as a fundamentally negative principle: it purports to conserve time while simultaneously creating more and more new work procedures.

8 “Low-lying oven drafts are inconvenient and waste space. Position steam-catch over the burners.” Standardizing efficiency by the book: illustration from Ernst Neufert’s indispensable Bauentwurfslehre [Architects’ Data].

“Twelve thirty and the spinach still isn’t done!” The mechanization and rationalization of the kitchen and washing procedures formed the basis for the widescale technologization of housework in postwar Europe. The food industry expanded and developed new, timesaving meals that soon took over supermarkets and freezers. Beginning in the sixties, the “white technologies” – refrigerators, stoves, washing machines – were extensively marketed in new ways. Television brought the day’s events, along with news of new products, to the housewife, who in accordance with modern urban planning spent her days alone in a detached house in a brandnew suburban development. The “practical” household appliances for the new consumer/homemaker – washing machines, vacuum cleaners, etc. – were and still are developed primarily by male designers.10 The housewife, in fact, was a unifying force for commodity production and marketing, the central arenas of national economies following the war. Seemingly liberated from housework through the reorganization of the household and new technologies, she now increasingly worked – at so-called “women’s wages” – in production facilities, manufacturing the commodities she was meant to go out and buy.11 Time-budget studies show that mechanizing and technologizing housework has never succeeded in substantially reducing it. Household technologies have indeed increased the productivity of housework, but have been accompanied by mounting expectations of the role of the housewife, so that the housewife is encumbered with even more work, most of it now having to do with household management. There emerged a number of new tasks that, while not particularly strenuous physically, were as time-consuming as the activities they were supposed to replace. Beyond housework itself, diverse studies have shown that household technologies reinforce the traditional division of labor in heterosexual couples and bind women even more firmly to their traditional role. This is due, among other things, to the fact that these technologies are used to privatize rather than collectivize work and thus prevent any redistribution of housework. The combined labor model common today, according to which all family members take part in the running of the household, has never substantially fostered men’s participation in housework, not even in rationalizing it by casting housekeeping as a kind of economics. According to Judy Wajcman, the increasing technologization of the home actually overrides attempts to distribute housework more equitably, and the time that men spend on housework is decreasing. In addition, the relation of men and women to house138

9 Film stills from a commercial for Findus spinach by Roco Frisco, 1961.

hold technology needs to be understood in terms of their respective relations to housework and machines. Cultural notions of masculinity emphasize competency in the use and repair of machines. Mechanical competency has traditionally been a component of manliness since it demonstrates control over the physical environment. While women are able to utilize machines in the traditional sense, especially those that have to do with the kitchen and with cleaning, this is not viewed as technical competency.12 Finally, the rationalization and effectivization of housework has substantially contributed to embedding the role of woman in it. At the same time, the managerial science analysis of housework is informed by another negative dynamic, inasmuch as the work conducted is viewed as something to be “gotten rid of” and thus remains unattractive. Men who wrote on the issue of the household in the fifties, sixties, and seventies obstinately maintained the idea that as a result of household technologies housewives hardly had to work anymore. At the end of the fifties, sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that industrialization had relieved the family system of many of its functions so that the only function it had left was that of consumption.13 The function of the woman was now reduced to socializing the children and stabilizing the adult personality. Housework, cleaning and washing, and preparing food, i. e. the kitchen, were no longer considered jobs by Parsons since he viewed them as completely automatized. Human activity was thus made invisible by machines. The Good Companion Against this background, beginning in the sixties, the woman was granted an emotional function – a counterweight to the more “serious,” rational, masculine world of gainful employment. Home139

10 Advertisement for Prometheus ovens. 11 Advertisement for Gallay dishwashers.

making was increasingly understood in terms of the woman’s affection for her family. Catherine Beecher’s early efforts to objectify housework and recognize it as a job were reversed in the course of technologizing the household. Now that women were seemingly freed by technology from having anything to do, and instead found themselves according to the logic of the technologizers in a kind of involuntary state of leisure or unemployment, emotional tasks were foregrounded: decorating the house and providing a cheerful ambience, being a supremely loving and caring wife and lover, being a new, pedagogically revaluated kind of mother, and raising children in general. Structural transformations of the new household labor force were accompanied by an ideology of what it meant to be a housewife. For in the course of industrialization, housework passed through all the stages of restructuring that a company would and was just as much affected by the technology crisis of the sixties and seventies. This manifested itself in the kitchen as well, which was now no longer a purely functional space but became again the warm and cozy hearth to which one could retreat after the day’s work was done. Being a housewife, as cookbooks and guidebooks of that generation make clear, was linked to a new social role, that of the waiting, loving, and nurturing woman.14 A woman’s qualifications were now social in nature and no longer couched in terms of Fordism and the science of management. The performative feat of being a housewife can be understood to be what Foucault termed a technology of the self, which holds its subjects to adhering to the appropriate norms, or, in the case of the housewife, to interiorizing them so thoroughly that they are no longer recognized as norms. On the one hand, genders and gender dichotomy are structured by the separation of public and private spheres and of paid and unpaid labor. On the other hand, the “private arena” is no less disciplinary in its effects on the subjects acting within it. Just as the Taylorist factory produced the male worker, industrialization created the female domestic worker. The “invisible” work in the home was subject to a far more massive gender affliction than industrial paid labor, which may have been marked as masculine but nevertheless promised access for the other sex. Housework, by contrast – aside from the now vanishing images of men who cook, cited at the beginning – has never been seen as an attractive field for socially integrat140

“The Kitchen of Tomorrow”: model kitchen of the Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Co., 1943, designed by H. Creston Dohner. 12 Kitchen area: covered appliances; sunken, retrievable cooking pots in the stove; glass-walled oven (left); generous “picture window, to bring the outdoors inside and provide perfect lighting conditions.” 13 Living/dining area: “The Kitchen of Tomorrow comes to life”: by folding the dining table back into the wall, “the full floor area of the dining alcove immediately becomes available for play pen, games, sewing or other activities.” Libbey-OwensFord had created the “Kitchen of Tomorrow” in order to “help point the way toward building a better post-war world.”

ing the sexes. Nor have household activities such as raising children, caring for the elderly, and preparing food in the kitchen been viewed as productive activities, although they are all life-support systems in the truest sense of the word. The cynical abolishment of housework can be read as the history of disregarding activities that have been naturalized as feminine and as the expression of an abstract and normative concept of work that ignores everything that does not promise to increase productivity.15 For even the technologization of the household entirely interiorized the principle that all activities can be optimized in terms of an industrial science of management. The quantifiable job performance of industrialization was thus meant to be mirrored in the labor taking place in the home. The rationalization of housework served to anchor in modernity a new, rationally-acting labor subjectivity and to project a “new woman” to be recognized by the regime of labor and the patriarchy. In the post-modern era she has been redesigned as an emotional role model and even today women are steadfastly assumed to have more social competence. The image of the housewife who cheerfully and lovingly does her job each day without a boss or commander remains stable and operative. Only in the seventies did women begin calling at the top of their lungs for a general strike. With the new women’s movement in the seventies, voices were raised above all against the assumption that only paid labor, especially that of industrial production, counts as work. The productive combination of child raising, consumption, and housework on the one hand and gainful employment on the other was abrogated, and this was expressed in calls for “money for housework.” According to Elisabeth Stiefel, a feminist economist from Cologne, the respective analyses and critiques of reproduction advanced by feminist economists against the paradigm of industrial production were just

14 “Grim, isn’t it?”: the fully automated “Postwar Faucet Kitchen” – a self-parody from U. S.-American industry circles, 1940s, (following double-page spread).

141

15 Cover of Lilo Aureden’s What Men Like to Eat (1954). 16 Advertising poster for Satrap Household Appliances, COOP Schweiz, 1970.

as mired in our commodity-producing system and its theories as was the so-called woman’s career itself. For the concept of “household production” that was advanced by the women’s movement in order to draw attention to the significance of household labor, excluded per definition everything that could not be rendered anonymously by third parties, which is to say, equally by way of the market.16 And neither the old nor the new image of the kitchen says anything about cleaning, about shopping, or about meeting with friends and lovers or any of the other social activities that take place at home. There are for example kitchens that have seen the planning of cultural and political revolutions, and kitchens that have never seen a meal whipped up in five minutes flat at all. The depreciation of housework as a lesser occupation and the modern conception of the career has thus seduced feminists as well into accepting the regime of paid labor as a preferred emancipation project into which the emancipated feminine subject should be integrated in order to demonstrate her social equality. The entry into the work force by women in western industrialized countries remains an unevenly bought emancipation, one that has given rise today to a whole chain of new social hierarchies.17 In contrast to unpaid housework and regardless of how it is organized (as freelance, temporary, part-time, or full-time), paid labor 144

in western societies today is more than ever considered a guarantee for social integration and for safeguarding one’s status. The depreciation of informal housework and caretaking is accompanied by a specific lifestyle and a politics of efficiency. Working and living are conceived of today in terms of an entirely new productive relationship, one in which private undertakings are economically oriented. As sociologists have noted, this involves managing one’s private life like a company in order to make the time spent on living and working as productive as possible.18 The go-getting men and women who no longer either can or want to take care of their households are instead required to educate themselves for the rest of their lives or to sell their flexible labor on a deregulated job market. In this context, the kitchen has turned into a social meeting place just as it once became an assembly line. A place not just for grazing but for chatting about business, one that is no longer just an extension of the living room but likewise an antechamber to the office – as kitchen designers are trying to sell it to us now. And so in the already faded picture of our hobby chefs we find not only displaced housework and its history of oppression but also new forms of gainful employment inscribed – backwards and illegible – a smiling specter.

17 “Man, Marx says nothing about housework”: poster for the Money For Housework campaign, 1970s.

Further Reading Boudry, Pauline, Brigitta Kuster, and Renate Lorenz, eds. Reproduktionskonten fälschen! Heterosexualität, Arbeit & Zuhause. Berlin: b_books, 1999.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. Cockburn, Cynthia. Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change. London: Pluto Press, 1983. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz: “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Changes in the Twentieth Century.” Technology and Culture 17 (1976): 1–23. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1977. Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History. New York: Oxford University Press. 1948. Reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1969. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1983. 145

Kurz, Robert, Ernst Lohoff, and Norbert Trenkle, eds. Feierabend! Elf Attacken gegen die Arbeit. Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1999. McLuhan, Mashall. The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man. New York: Vanguard Press. 1951. Reprint, Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2002. Wajcman, Judy. Feminism Confronts Technology. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.

18 “Fuck Housework”: poster for the Money For Housework campaign, 1970s.

1 The relation between masculinity and the kitchen is traditionally epitomized by the occupation of the professional chef, which nowadays includes that of the television chef as well. Cooking was never exclusively the domain of women, but involved the distinction between a public and paid male profession and an unpaid, private female “condition.” If kitchen designs before were oriented to women, they now are conceived with the male professional chef in mind. 2 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997). 3 The rationalization, mechanization, and technologization of the kitchen should not be understood as a purely technological phenomenon. On the contrary, every analysis of the technologization of household activities is linked to an ideological history that idealizes this space, the home, as the place of personal freedom, leisure, and absence of discipline for the gainfully employed, married man. 4 If the formal and informal sectors are considered together, it becomes clear that women globally work far more than men. This has been proven statistically by various international surveys, but is rarely discussed. An immigrant woman household worker cannot afford to hire a cleaning lady, just as single working mothers cannot (see Lydia Potts, “Migrantinnen im Weltmarkt für Arbeitskraft,” in Heute hier – Morgen fort: Migration, Rassismus und die (Un)Ordnung des Weltmarktes, ed. Arbeitsgruppe 501 [Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Informationszentrum Dritte Welt et al., 1993], 84–87, and Mascha Madörin, “Der kleine Unterschied in hunderttausend Franken,” Widerspruch (Zurich) 16, no. 31 (July 1996): 127–142. 5 See Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991). 6 Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home. Or, Principles of Domestic Science (New York, Ford, 1869): 318. 7 See Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002): 9. 8 In the Socialist utopias of One Kitchen Houses in “Red Vienna,” first attempts were made to collectivize housework and deprivatize the kitchen. This would enable women to pursue careers as factory workers, secretaries, or telephone operators. 9 Due, paradoxically, to their having the multiple burdens of housekeeping, child care, and career, women today are still considered “supplemental wage earners” (supplemental to the male “single-income”). Even today, on account of their working overtime for society, women around the world earn less than men. 10 See Dolores Hayden, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1981).

146

11 See Cynthia Cockburn and Ruzˇa First-Dili´c, eds., Bringing Technology Home: Gender and Technology in a Changing Europe (Buckingham, England: Open University Press, 1994). 12 Cynthia Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change (London: Pluto Press, 1983). 13 Talcott Parsons, “The American Family: Its Relations to Personality and to the Social Structure,” in Family Socialisation and Interaction Process, ed. Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bates (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956): 3–33. 14 See Ruth Schwartz Cowan, “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home: Household Technology and Social change in the Twentieth Century,” Technology and Culture 17 (1976): 1–23, and id., More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983). 15 See Hannah Arendt, “Labor and Fertility,” The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958): 101–109. 16 See Elisabeth Stiefel, “Über den Zwiespalt zwischen globaler Ökonomie und der simplen Sorge für das Leben,” Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft (Bonn) 3 (1998): 299–309, as well as Elisabeth Stiefel and Marion von Osten, “ArbeitArbeitArbeit – und was kommt danach?” in Das Phantom sucht seinen Mörder. Ein Reader zur Kulturalisierung der Ökonomie, ed. Justin Hoffmann and Marion von Osten (Berlin: b_books, 1999): 157–167. 17 See Bettina Heintz, Eva Nadai, Regula Fischer, and Hannes Ummel, eds. Ungleich unter Gleichen: Studien zur geschlechtsspezifischen Segregation des Arbeitsmarktes (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1997), as well as Brigitte Young, “Asynchronitäten der deutsch-deutschen Frauenbewegung,” PROKLA 94, 1, no. 24 (1993): 49–63. 18 Ulrich Bröckling, Susanne Krassmann, and Thomas Lemke, eds., Gouvernementalität der Gegenwart. Studien zur Ökonomisierung des Sozialen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999).

147

René Ammann

To Table! To Table? In order to understand at what point appliances became necessary in the kitchen and cutlery was required on the table, we must go a long way back – to the beginnings of mankind.

Cooking, but how? – The long road

Stone-age Native American menu 12,000 years ago: Roasted snails Ragout of snakes and lizards on chili peppers Cactus figs In the beginning there was carrion. The first creatures related to modern-day human beings subsisted on the flesh of dead animals. The oldest traces to date of human consumption were found in Kenya on antelope bones. The one-and-a-half-million-year-old skeleton sections are marked by incisions that could not have been made by the teeth of lions or hyenas. Early human beings must have chewed on the bones, possibly to get at the marrow. And, indeed, pre-human tools were found near the bones – thin, razor-like splinters produced by hitting rocks together. Researchers have discovered that these could even have been used to cut elephant hide. Apart from an antelope, these early humans, who had settled for a short time on a river bank, had eaten two pygmy hippopotamuses, giraffes, zebras, a pig, and a catfish. The researchers found neither hunting weapons nor animal traps. They conclude from this that our ancestors followed the herds on their migrations through the African plains and collected the flesh of dead animals. The way our ancestors ate and the fact that they searched for food in order to eat it at a later time was decisive for the evolution of humankind. For this reason humans learned to walk upright since they needed their hands to collect food and to carry it back to their living site. Moreover, the upright gait helped ancestors to spot lame animals and circling vultures. Their hands were free to use tools and to separate the meat from the bones. Did they eat roots? Did they consume herbs and other plants? There was no evidence of this at the site where the antelope bones were found but this does not necessarily prove anything. Pods and other vegetable remains are not preserved for as long as bones are. What the bones do tell us is that our ancestors had not yet discovered fire as a method of roasting or cooking. The first signs of fire use show that this revolution in food preparation took place at around the same time in both China and France about half a million years ago. Thanks to fire, food could be made tastier and more easily 149

digestible. Moreover, fire killed bacteria and parasites. “Culinary history, if not history in general, thus began with the taming of fire,” as Jacques Barrau, Director of the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, once wrote. Thus, there was now fire. The first cooking utensil was probably a stick. However, it would be a few hundred thousand years before cooking pots were invented. Our ancestors used tortoise shells, mussel shells, or ostrich-egg shells to simmer their food. Cooking without a pot is possible if one digs a hole in the ground and places the meat or the vegetables between hot stones and then covers the hole so that the steam does not escape – a great leap for the culinary arts. One could also place different grasses on top of the meat and see how they tasted. Another method was developed by the Native American tribes. After killing an animal, they dug a hole roughly the size of the carcass. They then lined the hole with the skin from the animal’s back before pouring in water and adding the meat. Hot stones were then held in the “broth” until the meat was tender. Quartz was the best type of stone for this form of cooking, and in order to hold the hot stones in the water the early Native Americans used either a sheaf of bound sticks or a wooden spoon – cooking utensils that are still used today. The use of fire had far-reaching effects. The fact that cooked food could be chewed much more easily than raw food ultimately meant that a massive set of teeth was no longer needed. Over time, the size of the jaw and the teeth was reduced, and as a result our ancestors were able to develop a form of communication and thus more complex social relations. In short, the word came into being. Extrapolating from evidence of larynx formation at the time, researchers have suggested that one of the first words uttered by one Homo sapiens to another approximated a guttural growl. In contrast to his ancestor, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens was a hunter! Some ten thousand years ago, hunter and gatherer peoples adopted a sedentary existence, devoting themselves to agriculture and handcrafts (the oldest clay cooking pots are arguably as old as this sedentary form of life.) This process altered the very roots of human society: the larger the settled groups became, the more dependent they were on the fields they planted with rice, wheat, and potatoes. For the first time, food was not equally distributed. For the first time there were those who lived from a surplus and those who suffered shortages. The transition to agriculture marked the transition to a class society in which rich and poor soon developed different habits of cooking and eating. At the beginning of the eighth century, a law in Ireland stipulated, among other things, how children given into fosterage were to be nourished: “The children of the lower classes are to receive just enough porridge of oatmeal and buttermilk or water, to which old butter is to be added. The sons of the upper classes are to receive a good amount of porridge made of barley and fresh milk with fresh butter. The sons of kings receive porridge of wheat meal and fresh milk with honey.” In biblical times the people in what is now Israel ate locust soup and boiled sheep tails, wild flowers dipped in honey and, due to their preference for spicy vegetables, were known as “garlic eaters.” Biblical cooks mixed mint and mustard and created marinades of 150

thyme, salt, and sesame. In the mornings the peasants ate wheat cakes, and in the evenings they drank whey (Qom) from wooden cups. On stoves fuelled with animal dung, they cooked lentils – as a soup, mush, or braised in honey. The only crops that grew plentifully in the area around Jerusalem were olives and vines. Archeologists have found hundreds of grape presses. Wine was conserved with raisins, honey, cardamom, and fruit juice. But not everyone could afford good juice. Many drank tamad, which was made from grapes that had already been pressed. When Jesus was on the cross, a soldier gave him a sponge soaked in this crude beverage. Luther translated the word tamad as “vinegar.” Eating with what? Simple luncheon (Switzerland, mid-twentieth century): Soup Lung ragout Potato pieces Dried fruit or salad

Luncheon for the more demanding palate (Switzerland, mid-twentieth century): Soup Cheese pastry Meatloaf Mashed potatoes Mixed vegetables Fruits The ancient Swiss ate the same things as their neighbors: porridge, stew, and bread. And with what? There are three possible methods: with their hands, as has been done since time eternal; with chopsticks, a tradition reaching back three thousand or four thousand years; or with a fork, a practice some three or four hundred years old. With the exception of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, hands were used for eating the world over at least until the sixteenth century. The majority of the world’s people still eat this way, using the right hand for input and the left hand for output. The oldest chopsticks in existence are made of ivory and were found in the ruins of a Chinese palace from the Zhou dynasty dating back to the eleventh century B. C. Anyone eating with chopsticks eats without weapons. It was common practice in many societies to discard one’s weapons before eating. In China one ate only with chopsticks, never with knives. In former times, the Swiss usually ate with their hands, at best with a spoon and a knife. Forks did not exist. The German word for spoon derives from the verb describing the slurping of stew. Even when a meal was shared with guests, each person sharing in the meal had to bring their own spoon, which was at that time carved of wood. In the sixteenth century, Swiss men carried not only a spoon with them but also the Schwyzertolch – the Swiss knife. Like all knives at the time, it had a sharpened point, and after cutting it was used to skewer the portion and transport it to the mouth. After use, the knife was wiped clean on either the tablecloth, if there was one, or on the trousers before being put away.

152

As is the case today, every Swiss man possessed a knife at this time. This was remarked on by Michel de Montaigne when he wrote in 1580: “A Swiss never eats without a knife, which is used to take the food so that the bowl is not touched by the fingers.” It is only since the nineteenth century that eating exclusively with a knife has been considered unrefined, at least at the table. While Swiss men carried the Schwyzertolch, Swiss women carried a utensil holder containing a small knife and an early form of spoon along with their Ridikül, or handwork bag. Neither the men’s nor women’s implements could be kept free of rust at this time. The first cast-iron knife blade was manufactured in Chesterfield in England in 1781, and rustproof table utensils, which no longer carried a bitter aftertaste or required constant cleaning, first became available in 1913. Of the three most important utensils – spoon, knife, and fork – the latter has had the shortest career. The fork first appeared as a kitchen utensil in Homeric times, in the eighth century B. C. Initially it had five prongs, which formed a circle. The Romans used a similar utensil to extract the snail meat from its shell. However, opinions have tended to differ throughout history as to whether the fork was really necessary, as witnessed by a visitor to Venice in the eleventh century. “The Doge of Venice, Orseolo II, had a Byzantine wife,” writes the visitor, “She does not touch any food with her fingers; the eunuchs had to cut her food into precise pieces, which she then placed in her mouth with a two-pronged fork.” This practice, initially sniggered at if not ridiculed, became established in Venice in the sixteenth century and then spread throughout the rest of Italy, initially in the courts and then throughout the rest of the population. It must be said that the fork did not always win over emperors and kings. The French king Louis XIV (1683–1715) refused to use a fork and forbade his princes to eat with forks in his presence. His wife, Elisabeth Charlotte d’Orléans, also known as Lieselotte von der Pfalz (1652–1722), wrote to Germany: “I have never heard of such a thing; in my whole life I have eaten only with my knife and my five fingers.” However, Lieselotte von der Pfalz was unable to stop the fork’s triumphal march. The utensil made its way throughout the world in the luggage of conquerors and colonialists and became socially desirable. Formal dining required its use, and this remains the case, at least wherever French and English – the languages of the former colonists – are spoken over dinner. However, if one is speaking Indian or Swahili, it is quite permissible to use one’s fingers, as our ancestors did. And, as if by the force of some belated revenge of the colonized, the former conquerors are now changing their manners. Now they disdain prongs and silver, serve finger food, and reach greedily for appetizers. With both hands. Including the left one.

153

Further Reading Mellinger, Nan. Fleisch: Ursprung und Wandel einer Lust. Eine kulturanthropologische Studie. (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2000).

Müller, Susanna. Das fleissige Hausmütterchen: ein Führer durch das praktische Leben für Frauen und erwachsene Töchter. 1860. (Reprint, Zurich: Zeller, 211921). Nietlispach, F. 200 Mittagessen. (Olten: Selbstverlag J. Nietlispach, n.d.). von Paczensky, Gert and Anna Dünnebier. Leere Töpfe, volle Töpfe: Die Kulturgeschichte des Essens und Trinkens. Munich: Knaus, 1994. Pini, Udo. Das Gourmet-Handbuch. (Cologne: Könemann, 2000). Radel, Jutta and Margrit Hug. Höllisch gut: Himmlische Gerichte aus dem Alten und dem Neuen Testament. (Frauenfeld: Waldgut, 1994). Richardson, Matthew. The Penguin Book of Firsts. (London: Penguin, 1998). Schmidt-Leukel, Perry, ed. Die Religionen und das Essen. (Kreuzlingen: Hugendubel, 2000). Vamosh, Miriam Feinberg. Food at the Time of the Bible: From Adam’s Apple to the Last Supper. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2004). Zuckerman, Larry. The Potato: From the Andes in the Sixteenth Century to Fish and Chips. The Story of How a Vegetable Changed History. (London: Macmillan, 1998).

154

Select Bibliography

Overview

a) Contemporary Andritzky, Michael, ed. Oikos – Von der Feuerstelle zur Mikrowelle: Haushalt und Wohnen im Wandel. Giessen: Anabas, 1992. FEMAIL Fraueninformationszentrum Vorarlberg e.V., ed. Brennpunkt Küche: planen, ausstatten, nutzen [exhibition catalogue]. Feldkirch: Frauenmuseum Hittisau & Heimatmuseum Schruns, 2001. Mielke, Rita. Die Küche: Geschichte, Kultur, Design. Berlin: Feierabend, 2004. Miklautz, Elfie, Herbert Lachmayer, and Reinhard Eisendle, eds. Die Küche: Zur Kulturgeschichte eines architektonischen, sozialen und imaginativen Raums. Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1999. Rinke, Bettina and Joachim Kleinmanns, eds. Küchenträume: Deutsche Küchen seit 1900 [exhibition catalogue]. Detmold: Lippisches Landesmuseum Detmold, 2004. b) Historical Lübbert-Griese, Kaethe, et al. Die moderne Küche. Hildesheim and Darmstadt: Werkhof – Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die moderne Küche e.V., 1956. Deutscher Werkbund Bayern, ed. Die Küche. Munich: Winkler, 21965. Home Economics, Technology, Sociology, Criticism

Arbeitsgemeinschaft Hauswirtschaft e.V. / Stiftung Verbraucherinstitut, ed. Haushaltsträume. Ein Jahrhundert Technisierung und Rationalisierung im Haushalt. Königstein im Taunus: Langewiesche/Köster, 1990. Cockburn, Cynthia. Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change. London: Pluto Press, 1983.

157

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. “The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in the Home. Household Technology and Social Changes in the Twentieh Century.” Technology and Culture 17 (1976): 1–23. Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Command. A Contribution to Anonymous History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1948. Hirdina, Heinz. “Rationalisierte Hausarbeit: Die Küche im Neuen Bauen.” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 16 (1983): 44–80. Meyer, Erna. Der neue Haushalt: Ein Wegweiser zu wirtschaftlicher Hausführung. Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlagsanstalt, 1926. Meyer, Sibylle and Eva Schulze, eds. Technisiertes Familienleben. Blick zurück und nach vorn. Berlin: Bohn, 1993. Meyer, Sibylle and Eva Schulze. Technik im Familienalltag. Zurich: VontobelStiftung, 1993. Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Stadt Dortmund ed. Beruf der Jungfrau: Henriette Davidis und Bürgerliches Frauenverständnis im 19. Jahrhundert [exhibition catalogue]. Oberhausen: Krumbeck / Graphium press, 1988. Schütz-Glück, Irmgard. Wohnen und Wirtschaften. Haushaltsführung, Einrichtung und Pflege des Haushalts. Stuttgart: Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung, 171969. Siegrist, Hannes, Hartmut Kaelble, and Jürgen Kocka, ed. Europäische Konsumgeschichte: Zur Gesellschafts- und

Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18. bis 20. Jahrhundert). Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1997. Silbermann, Alphons. Die Küche im Wohnerlebnis der Deutschen. Eine soziologische Studie. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1995. Stahl, Gisela. “Von der Hauswirtschaft zum Haushalt oder wie man vom Haus zur Wohnung kommt: Die Ökonomie des ganzen Hauses und die Ökonomisierung der Hausfrau.” In Wem gehört die Welt? Kunst und Gesellschaft in der Weimarer Republik [exhibition catalogue], 87–108. Berlin: NGBK, 1977. Tornieporth, Gerda, ed. Arbeitsplatz Haushalt: Zur Theorie und Ökologie der Hausarbeit. Berlin: Reimer, 1988. Wajcman, Judy. Feminism Confronts Technology. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. Architecture, Design, Planning

The Modern Kitchen Working Group (AMK) has published extensive primers on kitchen design, such as Das grosse Küchenhandbuch [The Big Kitchen Handbook]. They are primarily oriented to professionals and for that reason are not listed here. Numerous manufacturers of kitchens and appliances provide planning directions and design examples on their websites, which for obvious reasons are generally concentrated on their own array of products. Aicher, Otl. Die Küche zum Kochen. Das Ende einer Architekturdoktrin. Munich: Callwey, 1982. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die Moderne Küche e.V., ed. Ratgeber Küche. Mannheim, 2004. Gewerbemuseum Basel, ed. Die praktische Küche [exhibition brochure]. Basel: Böhm, 1930. Haselsteiner, Edeltraud. “Frauenträume – Küchen(t)räume.” Architektur & BauForum 33, no. 3 (2000): 132–139. Hegger, Manfred and Rainer Stührmann, eds. Wohnen und Wohnungen bauen [exhibition catalogue]. Stuttgart: Architektenkammer BadenWürttemberg, 1993. Die Küche: Ihre Planung und Einrichtung. Stuttgart: Hatje, 1954. Kühne, Günther. Küchen schön und praktisch. Bauwelt (supplement 17), 1954. Mayer, Hans-Werner. Küchen-Lexikon. Darmstadt: Die Planung, 2002. Verband Schweizerischer Fabrikanten von Einbauküchen VSFE ed. Das

Schweizer Küchen-Handbuch. Eine Dokumentation der Schweizer Küchenbauer. Zurich: VSFE, 1985. Specific Aspects

Hellmann, Ullrich. Künstliche Kälte: Die Geschichte der Kühlung im Haushalt. Werkbund-Archiv, Vol. 21. Giessen: Anabas, 1990 Noever, Peter, ed. Die Frankfurter Küche von Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1992. Orland, Barbara. Wäsche waschen: Technik und Sozialgeschichte der häuslichen Wäschepflege. Reinbek/Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1991. Zec, Peter and Vito Orazem, eds. Über den Herd: Eine kleine Kultur- und Designgeschichte der Kochstelle. Essen: Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, 1995. Journals

While the kitchen now seldom attracts attention from architectural trade journals like Architektur aktuell, Bauwelt, or Werk, Bauen + Wohnen, it is a regular topic in popular home magazines like Ideales Heim, Schöner Wohnen, etc. and in daily newspapers. In addition, there are numerous special issues on the market (e.g. Trendmagazin Küche & Bad), albeit of varying quality. DMK is one of the rare trade journals devoted exclusively to the kitchen. Die Küche. Fachzeitschrift für die Planung und Gestaltung von Küche und Haushalt. 1966 – Vol. 23, no. 3 (June 1988) (published 1982–1983 as Küche + Bad, and 1983–1988 as In: der Innenausbau heute). DMK. Die moderne Küche. Vol. 1, 1958–1959 – present (Vol. 1 published as Schriften der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Die Moderne Küche e.V.). Die Küchen-Zeitung. Vol. 1, 2001 to present. Online Resources

– http://www.amk.de/ AMK – Arbeitsgemeinschaft DIE MODERNE KÜCHE e.V. (The Modern Kitchen Working Group) – http://www.kuecheninfo.net Online information and service platform dedicated to the kitchen. – http://www.vkg.de VKG – Vereinigter Küchenfachhandel (United Kitchen Equipment Dealerships). – http://www.slowfood.com Slow Food – International union for the protection and promotion of traditional food and gastronomy.

158

Further Reading

Andersen, Arne. Der Traum vom guten Leben. Alltags- und Konsumgeschichte vom Wirtschaftswunder bis heute. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus, 1999. Breuss, Susanne and Wien Museum, eds. Die Sinalco-Epoche. Essen, Trinken, Konsumieren nach 1945 [exhibition catalogue]. Vienna: Czernin, 2005. Faller, Peter. Der Wohngrundriss. Stuttgart and Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002. Flagge, Ingeborg, ed. Geschichte des Wohnens. Vol. 5: Von 1945 bis heute. Aufbau – Neubau – Umbau. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999. Kähler, Gert, ed. Geschichte des Wohnens. Vol. 4: 1918–1945. Reform – Reaktion – Zerstörung. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1996. von Paczensky, Gert and Anna Dünnebier. Leere Töpfe, volle Töpfe. Die Kulturgeschichte des Essens und Trinkens, Munich: Knaus, 1994. Petsch, Joachim. Eigenheim und gute Stube. Zur Geschichte des bürgerlichen Wohnens. Städtebau – Architektur – Einrichtungsstile. Cologne: DuMont, 1989. Teuteberg, Hans Jürgen, ed. Die Revolution am Esstisch. Neue Studien zur Nahrungskultur im 19./20. Jahrhundert. Studien zur Geschichte des Alltags, Vol. 23. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2004.

Illustration Credits Despite having made every effort to do so, the editor was unable to locate every single copyright owner. Upon notification, he is ready to respond to legitimate claims with the appropriate compensation.

Cover Photograph, Friedrich Engesser (Therma Fitted Kitchen, 1963)

Foreword Full-page: Photograph, Ochs-Walde; Schule für Gestaltung Basel: Fotoarchiv Gewerbemuseum Basel

Introduction Full-page at the beginning: Photograph, Elliott Erwitt, © Elliott Erwitt/Magnum Photos, Illus. 1: Photograph, Konrad Wittmer, Suhr, Illus. 2–3: Photograph, Klaus Spechtenhauser, Illus. 4: Siemens Archive, Munich, Illus. 5: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 6: Hasso Gehrmann private archive

Vollenweider and Ammann Illustrations © illumueller.ch

Corrodi Full-page at the beginning: Photograph, Hans Finsler, © Stiftung Moritzburg, Halle; gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Illus. 1: Architekturzentrum Wien, Achleitner Archive, Illus. 2: Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich, Illus. 3–5: Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, Vol. 9, 1901–1902, © 2005 ProLitteris, Zurich, Illus. 6: Slezské zemské muzeum [Silesian Regional Museum], Opava, Czech Republic, Illus. 7: Bildarchiv Foto Marburg, Illus. 8: Architekturzentrum Wien, Achleitner Archive, Illus. 9: Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte der Stadt Dortmund, Illus. 10: Photograph, Wilhelm Willi, Arbeiterfotobund Zürich; Gretler’s Panoptikum zur Sozialgeschichte, Zurich, Illus. 11: Gretler’s Panoptikum zur Sozialgeschichte, Zurich, Illus. 12–13: Catherine E. Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman’s Home. Or, Principles of Domestic Science, New York: Ford, 1869, Illus. 14: Klaus Spechtenhauser private archive, Illus. 15: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 16: Siemens Archive, Munich, Illus. 17: Der Baumeister, Vol. 25, 1927, Illus. 18: Anton Brenner, Der wirtschaftlich durchdachte Plan des Architekten, Vienna: Ertl, 1951, Illus. 19: Photograph, Staatliche Bildstelle Berlin, © BauhausArchiv, Berlin, Illus. 20: Plan, Mia Ryffel, Illus. 21–22: Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam, Oud Archive, © 2005 ProLitteris, Zurich, Illus. 23: Plan, Mia Ryffel, Illus. 24: Die Form, Vol. 2, 1927, Illus. 25: Photograph, Collischonn; Sammlungen der Universität

für angewandte Kunst Wien, SchütteLihotzky Archive, Illus. 26: Photograph, Wolff; Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Schütte-Lihotzky Archive, Illus. 27: Bauwelt, Vol. 18, 1927, Illus. 28–29: Photographs, Collischonn; Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, SchütteLihotzky Archive, Illus. 30: Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Schütte-Lihotzky Archive, Illus. 31: Basler Plakatsammlung, Illus. 32: Photograph, Ochs-Walde; Staatsarchiv des Kantons Basel-Stadt, Illus. 33: Plan, Lukas Sonderegger, Illus. 34: gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Illus. 35: Photograph, Sigfried Giedion; gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Illus. 36: Plan, Mia Ryffel; Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Schütte-Lihotzky Archive, Illus. 37: Photograph, Perscheid; Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Schütte-Lihotzky Archive, Illus. 38: Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Schütte-Lihotzky Archive, Illus. 39: Der Baumeister, Vol. 28, 1930, Illus. 40: Schule für Gestaltung Basel: Fotoarchiv Gewerbemuseum Basel, Illus. 41: Plan, Lukas Sonderegger

Spechtenhauser Full-page at the beginning: Brigitte Kesselring private archive, Illus. 1: Photograph, Oliver Lang, Illus. 2: Snaidero, Majano (Italy), Illus. 3: Julius Blum GmbH, Höchst (Austria), Illus. 4: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 5: Franke Küchentechnik AG, Aarburg (Switzerland), Illus. 6–7: Photographs, Michael Wolgensinger; Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich, Illus. 8: Schweizerische Bauzeitung, Vol. 67, 1949, Illus. 9–10: gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Estate of Sigfried Giedion, Illus. 11: Design Collection, Museum of Design Zurich, Illus. 12: Klaus Spechtenhauser private archive, Illus. 13: Franke Küchentechnik AG, Aarburg (Switzerland), Illus. 14–15: Photographs, E. Müller-Rieder; gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Illus. 16: Plan, Mia Ryffel, Illus. 17: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 18: Design, Pierre Monnerat; Basler Plakatsammlung, Illus. 19: Brigitte Kesselring private archive, Illus. 20: Audiovisuelles Archiv MGB, Illus. 21–22: Electrolux AG, Zurich, Illus. 23: Basler Plakatsammlung, Illus. 24: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 25: Photograph, Bernhard Moosbrugger; Elisabeth Fülscher, Kochbuch, Zurich: Eigenverlag Fülscher, 71960, Illus. 26: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 27: Electrolux AG, Zurich, Illus. 28–29: Audiovisuelles Archiv MGB, Illus. 30:

159

AMP/Audiovisuelles Archiv MGB, Illus. 31–32: Audiovisuelles Archiv MGB, Illus. 33–35: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 36: Photograph, M+B Zurbuchen-Henz, Illus. 37: Werk, Vol. 57, 1970, Illus. 38: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 39: Coop Himmelb(l)au; Ewe Küchen Gesellschaft mbH, Wels (Austria), Illus. 40: Hasso Gehrmann private archive, Illus. 41: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 42: Photograph, Klaus Spechtenhauser, Illus. 43: Image Archive, ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich, Illus. 44: Photograph, Lukas Sonderegger, Illus. 45: A. D. P. Architektur Design Planung, Walter Ramseier, Illus. 46: Photograph, Lukas Sonderegger, Illus. 47: Staufer & Hasler Architekten, Illus. 48–49: Photograph and plan, Martin Spühler, Illus. 50–51: Photograph and plan, Buchner Bründler Architekten, Illus. 52–53: Snaidero, Majano (Italy), Illus. 54: Photograph, Klaus Spechtenhauser

Kähler Full-page at the beginning: Photograph, Leonardo Bezzola; Swiss Foundation of Photography, Winterthur, Illus. 1: Image Archive, ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich; Illus. 2: Snaidero, Majano (Italy), Illus. 3: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 4: Photograph, Randall Schmidt, Pattern Language, Illus. 5: Photograph, Klaus Spechtenhauser, Illus. 6: Photograph, Randall Schmidt, Pattern Language, Illus. 7–10: Photographs, Roland Halbe, © Roland Halbe Fotografie, Stuttgart, Illus. 11: Image Archive, ETH-Bibliothek, Zurich, Illus. 12–13: Karl Richard Kräntzer, Grundrissbeispiele für Geschosswohnungen und Einfamilienhäuser (Wiesbaden and Berlin: Bauverlag, 41976), Illus. 14: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 15: Photograph, Roland Halbe, © Roland Halbe Fotografie, Stuttgart, Illus. 16–19: Bulthaup GmbH & Co KG, Aich (Germany), Illus. 20–21: Alphons Silbermann, Die Küche im Wohnerlebnis der Deutschen. Eine soziologische Studie (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1995), Illus. 22: Photograph, Konrad Wittmer, Suhr

Sonderegger Full-page at the beginning: Photograph, Friedrich Engesser, Illus. 1: Siemens Archive, Munich, Illus. 2: Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 3–4: gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Illus. 5: Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 6: Siemens Archive, Munich, Illus. 7–8: Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 9: Photograph, Wolf-Bender; Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich, Illus. 10:

Franke Küchentechnik AG, Aarburg (Switzerland), Illus. 11: Therma 1907–1932. Denkschrift zum fünfundzwanzigjährigen Bestehen der “Therma” Fabrik für elektrische Heizung A.-G. (Schwanden: Therma, o.J. [1932]); Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 12: Neue Grafik 15, 1963, Illus. 13: Design, Atelier Halpern; Klaus Spechtenhauser private archive, Illus. 14–15: Design, Atelier Halpern, photographs, Friedrich Engesser; Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 16: Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 17: Photograph, Friedrich Engesser, Illus. 18: Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 19: Photograph, Friedrich Engesser, Illus. 20–23: Design, Atelier Halpern, photographs, Rolf Schroeter, Illus. 24: Design Collection, Museum of Design Zurich, Illus. 25: Klaus Spechtenhauser private archive, Illus. 26: Christina Sonderegger private archive, Illus. 27: Design Collection, Museum of Design Zurich, Illus. 28–32: Photographs, Friedrich Engesser, Illus. 33: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 34: Siemens Archive, Munich

Kesselring Full-page at the beginning: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 1: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 2: Sanitas Troesch AG, Bern, Illus. 3: Poggenpohl Group (Schweiz) AG, Littau,

Illus. 4–5: Photograph, Collischonn; Sammlungen der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Schütte-Lihotzky Archive, Illus. 6: Sanitas Troesch AG, Bern, Illus. 7: Julius Blum GmbH, Höchst (Austria), Illus. 8–13: Bruno Piatti AG, Dietlikon (Switzerland), Illus. 14–15: Plans, Lukas So nderegger (after Otl Aicher, Die Küche zum Kochen. Das Ende einer Architekturdoktrin [Munich: Callwey, 1982]), Illus. 16: Bulthaup GmbH & Co KG, Aich (Germany), Illus. 17–18: Julius Blum GmbH, Höchst (Austria), Illus. 19: Sanitas Troesch AG, Bern, Illus. 20: Bulthaup GmbH & Co KG, Aich (Germany), Illus. 21: Kludi GmbH & Co KG, Menden (Germany), Illus. 22: Franke Küchentechnik AG, Aarburg (Switzerland), Illus. 23: Bauknecht AG, Lenzburg (Switzerland), Illus. 24: Julius Blum GmbH, Höchst (Austria), Illus. 25: Leicht Küchen AG, Waldstetten (Germany), Illus. 26: V-Zug AG, Zug, Illus. 27: Electrolux AG, Zurich, Illus. 28: Miele AG Schweiz, Spreitenbach/Crissier, Illus. 29–30: Meyer, Moser, Lanz Architekten AG, Zurich, Illus. 31–32: Entwurfsatelier Kurt Greter, Zurich, Illus. 33–34: Forster Küchen, Arbon (Switzerland), Illus. 35–36: Wiesmann Küchen, Zurich, Illus. 37: Sanitas Troesch AG, Bern, Illus. 38: Bruno Piatti AG, Dietlikon (Switzerland)

(Schweiz) AG, Littau, Illus. 2–5: gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Estate of Sigfried Giedion, Illus. 6: Photograph, Ochs-Walde; gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Illus. 7: gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Estate of Sigfried Giedion, Illus. 8: Ernst Neufert, Bau-Entwurfslehre, Berlin: Bauwelt, 1936, Illus. 9a–i: Marion von Osten private archive, Illus. 10–11: DU, Vol. 20, no. 238, 1960, Illus. 12–14: gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Estate of Sigfried Giedion, Illus. 15: Lilo Aureden, Was Männern gut schmeckt, Munich: List, 1954, cover design, Li Gelpke-Rommel; Marion von Osten private archive, Illus. 16: Design, Peter Freis; Basler Plakatsammlung, Illus. 17–18: Pauline Boudry, Brigitta Kuster, Renate Lorenz, eds. Reproduktionskonten fälschen! Heterosexualität, Arbeit & Zuhause (Berlin: b_books, 1999)

von Osten

Last Page

Full-page at the beginning: Electrolux AG, Zurich, Illus. 1: Poggenpohl Group

Franke Küchentechnik AG, Aarburg (Switzerland)

(Museum of Design Zurich), Susanne Kridlo (Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden), Mia Ryffel, Marie Schenková (Slezské zemské muzeum [Silesian Regional Museum], Opava), Rolf Schroeter, Pascale Schuoler (Audiovisuelles Archiv MGB), Andrea Schweiger (Schule für Gestaltung Basel), Lukas Sonderegger, Walter Stauffacher,

Dorothea Stransky, Rolf Thalmann (Basler Plakatsammlung), Jindˇrich Vybíral, Ute Waditschatka (Architekturzentrum Wien), Daniel Weiss (gta Archives/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich), Ludˇek Wünsch (Slezské zemské muzeum [Silesian Regional Museum], Opava).

Select Bibliography Full-page: Photograph, Klaus Spechtenhauser (Café-Konditorei Aïda, Neubaugasse, Vienna)

Special thanks to Renate Allmayer-Beck, Andreas Bründler, Letizia Enderli (Swiss Foundation of Photography, Winterthur), Friedrich Engesser, Hans-Uli von Erlach, Christoph Frank (Siemens Archive, Munich), Esther Fuchs (Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich), Hasso Gehrmann, Roland Gretler, Andreas Huber, Franz Xaver Jaggy

160