If you can't take the Frankfurt, get out of the kitchen!

I've been reading about how kitchen were redesigned in the 1920s and 1930s by a woman named Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Called the "Frankfurt Kitchen," Schütte-Lihotzky, among many others, were attempting to make a more efficient, more rational domestic space that would be time-saving. All of this push towards greater functionality is based on Industrial Revolutionary models of productivity--think factory line and Fordism. The Frankfurt Kitchen was the result of detailed time-motion studies (mapping how housewives moved and used the kitchen) and was heavily influenced by the railway dining car kitchens of the period. According to Henri Lefevbre, “The kitchen’s spatial transformations affected the movements, postures, and gestures of its users. Only one person at a time could work in its new, efficient space. To minimize the work effort, the repetitive and monotonous model of the factory work performed alone on the assembly line.” Awesome. So, like academic articles, none of these were illustrated. I went onto google images and I found the this lovely gem above this text.

This image in color and in style reminded me of this lovely gem that I have so many fond memories of:

Ok, well, it's a bit of a poor photo given that the kitchen is under construct at the time it was taken but look! We were so very historically accurate in our color selection for our 1930s little home! How very Frankfurt of us! Luckily, this particular kitchen was late 1930s and there was a little more room for a few more bums in the kitchen.