Young Black Haired Girl Shows Off On The Chair In The Kitchen

To streamline work processes, Taylorism and time-motion studies were used to optimize processes. The German kitchen brand 'Poggenpohl', established in 1892 by Friedemir Poggenpohl, introduced ergonomic work-top heights and storage chutes that were later adopted by Schütte-Lihotzky's Frankfurt Kitchen. These ideas also spilled over into domestic kitchen architecture because of a growing trend that called for a professionalization of household work, noted in the mid-19th century by Catharine Beecher and amplified by Christine Frederick's publications in the 1910s.
Working class women frequently worked in factories to ensure the family's survival, as the men's wages often did not suffice. Social housing projects led to the next milestone: the "Frankfurt kitchen." Developed in 1926, this kitchen measured 1.9 m by 3.4 m (approximately 6 ft 2 inby 11 ft 2 in, with a standard layout. It was built for two purposes: to optimize kitchen work to reduce cooking time and lower the cost of building decently-equipped kitchens. The design, created by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, was the result of detailed time-motion studies and interviews with future tenants to identify what they needed from their kitchens. Schütte-Lihotzky's fitted kitchen was built in some 10,000 apartments in the housing projects erected in Frankfurt in the 1930s.
The initial reception was critical: it was so small that only one person could work in it; some storage spaces intended for raw loose food ingredients such as flour were reachable by children. But the Frankfurt kitchen embodied a standard for the rest of the 20th century in rental apartments: the "work kitchen". It was criticized as "exiling the women in the kitchen", but post-World War II conservatism coupled with economic reasons prevailed. The kitchen once more was seen as a work place that needed to be separated from the living areas. Practical reasons also played a role in this development: just as in the bourgeois homes of the past, one reason for separating the kitchen was to keep the steam and smells of cooking out of the living room.