Around 1900 there was a great difference between the living conditions of the rich and the poor. The lowest layer of the population usually rented a dwelling in a dead-end alley consisting of one or two rooms. In the living kitchen, a space of about 4 m by 4 m, stood a Leuven stove, the parents’ bed, and a table with chairs. Some poor people had so little furniture that they had no cupboards and hung the few clothes on hooks in the wall. The stove served both for heating, preparing meals, boiling water for the washing, and heating the flat-irons. They fetched the water from the one pump for all the inhabitants of the dead-end alley.
With the middle class the living kitchen was the room where all functions, except sleeping, took place. Everything had its place in this overloaded room, as can be seen in a still from Hans Richter’s 1930 film Die neue Wohnung.
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With the bourgeoisie the kitchen was a separate room, usually located in the raised basement. The staff prepared the meals there and brought them — often with a small lift — to the dining room above. The furniture consisted of a stove, a table with chairs, a china cupboard, a provisions cupboard, and in some cases an ‘ice’ cupboard, with a block of ice at the bottom. Formerly the pump sink stood in a separate part of the kitchen and sometimes in a separate room, the pump or scullery, because smells from the sewer could linger there. The pump sink got its place in the kitchen after airtight traps had come on the market. By the connection to the water supply a little tap replaced the impressive pump(s). Underneath came a rinsing table in metal, which replaced the stone pump sink. Above the stove hung a large hood for catching the vapours. It was connected to a flue. All this can be seen in a design by Lucien François (1894–1983) from 1915.
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The ‘palace’ for the banker Adolphr Stoclet (1871-1949) in Sint-Pieters-Woluwe, to a design by Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) from 1905, is one of the masterpieces of art nouveau. The kitchen from 1911 comes across as very modern through the rows of tall cupboards. The table in the middle of the room was at that time an important work surface for the kitchen staff.
In 1911 the American Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) published the book: Principles of Scientific Management. It became the standard work on rationalisation through standardisation and efficiency control. Taylor did not want to limit his insights to the factory but ‘to see them applied with equal right and equal success to all fields of human activity.’ In 1913 the book appeared in German with the title: Die Grundsätze wissenschaftlicher Betriebsfürung.In the same year the American Christine Frederick (1883–1970) published her book The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management, in which she applied Taylor’s theory to the household. In 1921 the German translation appeared in Berlin: Die rationelle Haushaltsführung. For the first time floorplans appeared with walking lines that indicated the sequence of actions, usually with an existing, bad solution, and a new, ideal one. The walking lines A stand for the preparing of the meal, the lines B for the clearing away and the washing up. In this way she obtained a logical placement of all the elements against the walls. If we look at her solutions with present-day eyes, these are still not ideal, among other things because of the great distance between the cooker and the rinsing table.
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The preparing of the meals no longer happened at a freestanding table, but on a work surface against the wall. In a photograph from the 1914 edition we see Christine Frederick standing at a higher table, but in the 1918 edition she is sitting on a high stool at a work surface that lies at the same height as the cooker next to it. Under the work surface is a cupboard and above it, against the wall, the typical hanging cupboard. Cylindrical pots serve for the storing of dry food. In 1923 Christine Frederick went further into the matter in the 516-page book Household Engineering: Scientific Management in the Home, with lists and durations of all actions in the home, per day, per week, and per month of the year, and with extensive descriptions of household goods and appliances.
From the turn of the century 1900 onwards there were in the USA several manufacturers of multifunctional kitchen cupboards. The best known was the Hoosier Manufacturing Company, founded in 1898, which by 1920 had already sold two million Hoosier cabinets.
American architect Helen Binkerd Young (1877–1959) was best known for her lectures on architecture and organisation. In 1916, she published Planning the Home Kitchen as lesson 108 for The Cornell Reading Course for the Farm Home. In it, she divided kitchen functions into three: the food centre with sink and storage, the heating centre with stove and possibly storage for coal or wood, and the water centre with sink, draining rack and storage for crockery and pots and pans. Image 28 shows a kitchen in the suburbs. Binkerd opted for custom-built kitchen furniture and wrote: ‘In short, the appliances should be placed along the walls, leaving a free central space for working. Theoretically, any change in working height, whether it be a floor or a table, and any opening between two appliances, leads to a loss of efficiency; that is to say, the more continuous the layout, the more convenient the work will be’ and: ‘There is much to be said in favour of built-in appliances in terms of cleanliness and appearance. In [this] case, there are no gaps behind or under the furniture and, as a result, there is no need to move heavy items when cleaning.
A table, a stove and a cupboard, all separate and standing on legs or castors, clearly make it more difficult to keep the floor clean than if the cupboard and stove were placed directly on the floor and the table space replaced by a worktop. The built-in furniture is connected in a U-shape, which was very progressive for that period. Helen Binkerd was also in favour of a separately placed stove. It is more comfortable to work further away from the heat, the stove is accessible from two or three sides for easy access to the pots, and the sides are easier to clean than if it were placed in a corner.
The long work surface was joined to the rinsing table. In contrast to contemporary kitchen furniture, the space underneath was usually kept free, so that the floor remained accessible. That space was used for storing the dustbin, tubs, and larger pots and pans. In illustration 30 from the same book we see such a solution. The little doors of the upper cupboards are replaced by roller blinds.
After WWI Europe adopted the new thinking about the kitchen. In 1924 the architect Bruno Taut (1880–1938) published Die neue Wohnung: Die Frau als Schöpferin. Illustration 50 shows the furnishing of a flat with the walking lines, for which he was inspired by the works of Christine Frederick. The kitchen furniture is built-in and the entire wall between the kitchen and the dining corner is taken up by a wall of cupboards with a part with little doors on both sides for passing through plates and food. To counteract the smells there are two doors between the kitchen and the dining corner.
In the book there are also photographs of the ‘Haus am Horn’, built in 1923, belonging to the first Bauhaus exhibition. It was designed by Georg Muche (1895–1987), assisted by Hannes Meyer (1889–1954) and Walter March (1889–1969). In the working out of it all the workshops of the Bauhaus took part. Marcel Breuer (1902–1981), pupil in the furniture workshop, was also involved. For the first time the kitchen furnishing shows a formal unity and simplicity. Muche wrote about this: ‘The kitchen must be the workshop, the laboratory of the housewife, in which every superfluous space and every possibly awkward placing of the objects lead to permanent overtime. It must become a mechanism, an instrument.’
In 1926 the German architect Erna Meyer published her book: Der neue Haushalt. Ein wegweiser zu wirtschaftlicher Hausführung. A year later the book was already at its 23rd edition and three years later at its 37th. She knew very vividly how to make suggestions to lighten the daily work of the housewife by limiting it to minimal movements. The Weimar Republic was a good breeding ground for the combination of domestic culture and science and technology.
Erna Meyer assisted in 1927 the Dutch architect J.J.P. Oud (1890–1963) with the kitchen furnishing of his dwellings at the Weissenhof exhibition in Stuttgart. Journals praised the kitchen because the function was clearly and beautifully designed. It is spacious and square in ground plan. In one corner stands the L-shaped work surface with rinsing table. The greater part of the space underneath is left open. In the wall with the window there is on the right below a casing of the dustbin and on the left the provisions cupboard, with in between a cutlery drawer. The gas cooker is, as was usual in that period, a separate appliance on legs. It stands in the corner, to the right of the sink. In the wall to the dining corner there is a built-in cupboard for the crockery, with serving hatch. In photographs we see a little stool at the sink by the window. But Oud also provided against the fourth wall a lower folding table and folding chair, apparently because there was still demand to prepare dishes in this arrangement. Not only cooking, but also all the elements for storage and washing got their place in the dwelling, such as a broom cupboard with slop sink under the stairs, a laundry place with little lift and place for the large washing boiler, the central heating, and a large built-in cupboard in the living room.
Oud had already in 1925 provided kitchens in the workers’ district De Kiefhoek, but they were only realised between 1928 and 1930. The storage was very scant, with a few shelves and a built-in cupboard. The serving cupboard between the kitchen and the dining corner did not materialise because of cutbacks. The U-shaped work surface, with the sink in the middle, was executed in granito and very practical.
At the Weissenhof exhibition of 1927 there were, in the Exchange Hall, also a kitchen by Erna Meyer and one of the early versions of the ‘Frankfurt Kitchen’. After WWI there was in the German cities a great shortage of flats whose rent was affordable for the working class. To cut the costs, there came large-scale projects with prefabricated building elements and simplified planning layouts, according to the requirements of modernism. To still be able to achieve a good equipment the architects had to save on the surface area of the rooms. From 1925 to 1930 Ernst May (1886–1970) was director of the municipal building department of Frankfurt. He surrounded himself with a strong staff of progressive architects and started up the large-scale housing programme Das Neue Frankfurt. He even published a journal with the same name. He was able in five years’ time to realise 15,000 dwelling units.
In 1926 May asked the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) to join the team. Margarete had already in 1921 written: ‘Every movement must be noted, the time needed for it measured with the stopwatch and all steps must be counted. Everything must be, so to say, put on the scales so that calculations can be made, so that something for which now ten movements are needed, can be done in eight.’ In the first instance Margarete investigated the relationship between heating, cooking, and eating. Her first proposal for a separate sitting room and an eating-room kitchen was rejected as too spacious. The team chose for a small, separate, fitted, and well-equipped kitchen. Margarete took the Mitropa kitchen of the German railways as example, with a surface of 2.90 m by 1.90 m, where in 15 hours meals could be prepared for 400 persons.
She developed the type of fitted kitchen that became known as the “Frankfurter Küche”. The kitchen was quite small and separated from the dining area by a wide sliding door. But it was full of technical solutions that made life easier for housewives, such as a fold-out ironing board, a wall-mounted drip tray, aluminium containers for dry food, glass sliding doors and a lighting element that could be moved both vertically and horizontally across the length of the kitchen. The refrigerator was considered too luxurious because people still went to the shop every day. The whole thing had the double advantage of lower construction costs and less work for the residents. By 1930, 10,000 fitted kitchens had been installed in Frankfurt.
Bruno Taut was chief architect of the real estate company GEHAG from 1924 to 1931 and was jointly responsible for the construction of 12,000 residential units in Berlin. His best-known work is the Grosssiedlung Britz, better known as the Hoefijzerwijk, which he designed together with city architect Martin Wagner (1885-1957). The apartments were fitted with the typical GEHAG kitchen.
In Belgium, Claire-Lucile Henrotin published four articles on kitchens in the Bulletin Ergologique, with the third article featuring a plan for a rational kitchen, drawn with the obligatory walking lines.
The work surface for food preparation is located here in the most logical place, between the stove and the sink.
Louis Herman De Koninck (1896-1984) was introduced to the Frankfurter Küche in 1929 at the second Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Frankfurt, where Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum was discussed.
Following the example of the Hooiser cabinets in the US, there were a few manufacturers in Europe offering multifunctional kitchen cabinets, such as Schuster’s kitchen alcove in Germany, Charles Blanc’s meubles-casiers in France and the cabinets by Tout en Orde from the Galerie du Meuble in Belgium, an image of which is shown below.
At the next CIAM congress, held in 1930 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, De Koninck presented a prototype for a kitchen, which became known as C.I.A.M.B. A characteristic feature of De Koninck’s kitchens were the large storage walls, usually between the kitchen and the dining area, but sometimes also against another wall. The big advantage was that the kitchen was constructed from prefabricated elements made of painted solid wood panels with a thickness of 15 mm. The doors were still hung in the frame, leaving the thickness of the cabinet walls visible. De Koninck used a modulation of 60 cm. Marcel Breuer had already proposed modulated elements for all the cupboards in the home in 1926, in the Wilensky apartment, with a modulation of 33 cm. Le Corbusier and Char’s casiers standards became better known, with a modulation of 75 cm.
Towards the end of 1931, the Van de Ven company launched De Koninck’s kitchen under the name “Cubex”. They were installed in large numbers in houses and flats, both before and after the Second World War. The brochures show cabinets with a width and height of 60 cm and a depth of 40 or 60 cm. In order to achieve a worktop height of 85 cm, the cabinets were placed on an 18 cm plinth and covered with a 2 cm worktop. When a European standard for the dimensions of kitchen units was issued, the 60 cm module was chosen.
To explain the progressive nature of De Koninck’s solutions, we can show that in the Swiss CIAM kitchen in the Neubühl district in 1931, elements such as the table, stove and sink were designed separately. This is a different approach to functionalism.
De Koninck naturally used Cubex kitchens in the homes he designed, such as this one for landscape architect Jean Canneel-Claes (1909-1989) in 1931. The serving hatch to the dining area remained important, as did a pull-out tablet to increase the work surface. The glass containers for dry food are also typical.
The flats were also suitable for a laboratory kitchen. They lacked the cellar and coal bunker found in rural homes — or these were located deep in the basement — and cooking and heating had to be done with gas. Either the residents went out to buy food every day, or they installed an electric refrigerator. The rational kitchens were not found in workers’ homes because they were too expensive. There, the concept of the kitchen-diner remained because they could only afford fuel, usually coal, for one stove.
The Bruynzeel company was a major manufacturer of kitchen furniture in the Netherlands. In 1938, it launched the Holland kitchen designed by Piet Zwart (1885-1977). The doors were rebated, which reduced the gaps between them. Both the Dutch Housewives’ Association and many architects were enthusiastic. The kitchen was also affordable, so that, especially after the Second World War, it became a common feature in Dutch homes. A built-in refrigerator was then part of the standard equipment.
