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By
Billie Ann Lopez
Most
likely you have never heard of the Viennese architect Margarete
Schütte- Lihotzky. she was the foremost female social architect
practicing in Europe before World War II. Her specialty was designing
working-class housing that would reduce the house work of working
women, particularly in the kitchen. In fact, her kitchen design
became the prototype of the modern built-in kitchen we take for
granted today.
Schütte-Lihotzky
designed the famed Frankfurt kitchen, which was functional,
Inexpensive, and could be mass-produced. Beginning in 1927, the
Frankfurt City Council installed 10,000 of her prefabricated kitchens
in working-class apartments. Before her innovative design, kitchens
were mostly planned for households with servants.
Getting
Started
The
first woman student in Vienna's School of Architecture,
Schütte-Lihotzky almost didn't get in. Her mother persuaded a
close friend to ask the famed Jugenstil artist Gustav Klimt for a
letter of recommendation. Reluctantly and belatedly, Klimt wrote a
letter in which he declared himself to be obliged to recommend the
young woman and cautioned the addressee to exercise his own
discretion on the matter. By the time the letter reached its
recipient, however, Schütte-Lihotzky had already been admitted.
Even
before graduating, Schütte-Lihotzky was winning prizes for her
designs. She studied under Oskar Strnad, one of the earliest
architects in Vienna to focus on housing for the working classes. The
City of Vienna built 58,667 new apartments housing almost 200,000
people between 1919 and 1934 (most of which still exist and are still
considered desirable housing). Among the architects with whom Schütte-Lihotsky
worked were Adolf Loos, Peter Behrens, Josef Frank, and Josef Hoffman.
The
Frankfurt Kitchen
In
1922 Schütte-Lihotzky learned about the Taylor system, a
scientific approach to understanding the necessity of accurately
measuring time per individual task in organizing the workday that was
transforming the industrial workplace in the United States. Around
the same time, she read an essay called "How Can Appropriate
Housing Construction Reduce the Work of Housewives" in the
Breslau journal The Silesian Home. Schütte-Lihotzky
immediately understood that by connecting design to function in the
kitchen, there would be a positive impact for the working woman
providing her with more time for her family and for herself.
To
work out the design of her kitchen, Schütte-Lihotzky used one
of the tools used by industrial workplace designers, the stopwatch.
She timed each task required in the kitchen from preparing a meal to
cleaning up afterward. Then using a railroad dining car kitchen as
her model, she designed a kitchen that was just 1.90 meters (about
6'3") wide and 3.44 meters (11'4") long resulting in a
floor space of 6.5 square meters (about 70 square feet).
Schütte-Lihotzky
included a sliding door so that the mother could talk to and watch
over her children in the living/dining area while working in the
kitchen. The distance from the stove to the dining table was just
three meters (10 feet). Other features included an opening above the
stove for ventilation. Next to the stove, she installed a fireless
cooking box. You could begin your dinner preparations in the morning
by placing partially cooked food in the insulated box, which would
cook food slowly in your absence.
To
keep food cool in pre-refrigerator times, she designed a storage
cabinet under the window with an opening to the outside, suitable to
European climate conditions. Kitchen furniture was installed on
raised concrete platforms to avoid dirt-catching nooks and crannies,
and the space between the top of cabinets and the ceiling was
enclosed for the same purpose. Next, she designed a sensible sink.
With your left hand, you held the item, washed it with your right
hand, and then placed it in a drying rack at your left to avoid
switching hands. The storage shelves for pots and pans were grids
of latches to allow items to dry completely.
Working
surfaces were made from beechwood which was resistant to acids and
marring, and easy to scour and keep clean. Schütte-Lihotzky
added a slot on one end so that refuse like potato peels or onion
skins could be swept off the counter, and into a rubbish bin below.
Wood surfaces not being used in food preparation were painted blue to
deter flies. Aluminum containers were installed
for
dry foodstuff like rice, noodles. and beans. To prevent mealworms,
oak was used for flour bins. An ironing board was attached to one
wall that could be folded up when not in use.
Following
the success of her Frankfurt kitchens, Schütte-Lihotzky joined
a team of German and Austrian architects who were invited to the
Soviet Union to design towns for the newly established industrial
complexes. Throughout the 1930s, she traveled in China, Japan, the
Netherlands, the United States, Greece, France, and Turkey lecturing
about and designing public housing and kindergartens.
|
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Margarete
Schütte-Lihotzky,
frankfurter
Küche (Frankfurt Kitchen), 1926.
The
Frankfurt City Council
installed
10,000 of the kitchens. |
WWII
and the Cold War
When
the Germans marched into Austria in 1938 Schütte-Lihotzky
joined both the communist party and the Austrian resistance. She was
arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death in 1940. The death
sentence was eventually lifted, but she spent the next four years.
three months, and one week in German concentration camps. Because of
her communist party activities, she received very few commissions
during the Cold War, having been essentially blackballed.
The
Present
Belatedly,
her accomplishments were recognized by the City of Vienna in 1980
when she was presented with Vienna's Architecture Award. Since then,
she received many awards and honors. In 1997, marking her 100th
birthday, Vienna went all out. At a special ceremony awarding her
additional honors, the mayor of Vienna asked her if there was
anything else she would still like to do. She smiled and said yes.
She would like another waltz. With that the mayor swept her up into
his arms, and they waltzed.
The
kitchens Schütte-Lihotzky designed long ago were a remarkable
achievement affecting the lives of working women to this day. |
