Nieuws
NOOK 1/26: KITCHEN SINK DRAMA
13 avril 2026
In 1926, the Frankfurt Kitchen, designed by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000), was introduced in Frankfurt. “This design still shapes kitchen layouts today, reinforcing how domestic work ‘naturally’ falls to women,” comments Anne-Karlijn van Kesteren.
Control centre
In our exhibition, we showed how ideas from the factory floor – efficiency theory based on measuring, planning, and optimising the assembly line – moved into the home. Films by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and photographs of their time-andmotion studies made clear how this logic of optimisation was applied to domestic labour as well. We also presented the work of the American home economist and efficiency expert Christine Frederick.
The kitchen was where everything came together. The housewife was positioned as the control centre of the household – the one expected to oversee, adjust, and anticipate constantly. We saw the same principles reflected in Piet Zwart’s Bruynzeel kitchen, which was based on similar premises to the Frankfurt Kitchen. His sketches showed how Zwart studied existing kitchens to arrive at the most efficient design possible – one that didn’t necessarily make the work lighter, but instead concentrated responsibility and workload on a single person. In that context, the Dutch title of Frederick’s work is telling: The Thinking Housewife: Manager and Worker in One.
The kitchen is the place where technology, politics and power relations intersect, because unpaid domestic work is organised and directed there. Appliances, layouts, and standardised measurements shape who does the work, how long it takes, and whether it is recognised at all. Historically, the kitchen was designed around the female body – her height, reach, and movements. Many standard kitchens still reflect that starting point today, quietly reinforcing traditional gender roles through everyday use.
The kitchen in Margarete Schütte- Lihotzky’s Vienna apartment, which she designed and where she lived for the final 30 years of her life. After she died in 2000, the apartment’s next tenant renovated the kitchen in line with her original ideas. Photos: Bettina Frenzel
Enclosed workstation
In 1926, the Frankfurt Kitchen – designed by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky – was introduced in Frankfurt, at a time when the city was a hub for progressive social housing and architectural thinking. It is often described as the first widely implemented fitted kitchen, installed on a large scale in Frankfurt apartments throughout the 1920s.
The power of the Frankfurt Kitchen lies not only in its form but also in the mindset behind it. Household work was treated as labour that could be planned, measured, and organised, and cooking was framed as technical, serious work. Because the kitchen was adopted so extensively in social housing (including in the Netherlands), this way of thinking had a lasting influence – shaping how kitchens are laid out to this day, and reinforcing how domestic work in many families still ‘naturally’ ends up with women.
The Frankfurt Kitchen is also seen as one of the first kitchens truly designed around the work itself: how you move, how often you reach for items, and how many steps you take. Schütte-Lihotzky drew on time-and-motion studies, but also on compact professional kitchens, such as those found on trains and ships. This approach inspired many followers, including in the Netherlands. Zwart, for instance, based his Bruynzeel kitchen on similar principles, and an early collaboration with Koen Limberg was also explored. Limberg conducted extensive research into efficiency in small kitchens, which he documented in his 1935 book Keukens. Central to all of this was the ambition to standardise: to develop a design that could be applied broadly, based on averages and shared standards.
Yet this recognition of domestic labour came with a clear downside. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Housewives’ Association played an important role in advancing the standardised kitchen, aiming to make household work more efficient and to treat it more seriously, even though it remained unpaid. What was often overlooked was the impact on the person doing the work. The kitchen was designed for a single worker – usually the housewife – turning it into an enclosed workstation. The work became better organised, but also lonelier and, in many cases, heavier, because responsibility was concentrated in one person.
Gender inequality
The book Discrimination by Design by Leslie Weisman shows how architecture and spatial design that appears ‘neutral’ can, in practice, sustain gender inequality and everyday discrimination. Assumptions about gender, care, and domestic labour are often built into the standard kitchen: that there is one primary user, that care work naturally belongs to that person, and that efficiency matters more than shared responsibility. What is presented as neutral design often turns out to align closely with traditional role divisions.
This is not necessarily surprising – and it extends beyond architecture. Designers work from their own experiences and assumptions and, often unintentionally, carry these into their work. As a result, design can reinforce existing patterns. The key is to be aware of this.
Installation of Piet Zwart’s Bruynzeel kitchen in the exhibition Women as Technology at Design Museum Den Bosch. Photo: Elise van den Arend
The open kitchen
In the 1970s, the shift from closed to open kitchens made domestic work more visible – and changed how it was performed. Cooking no longer happened behind a door, but in the middle of the living space, making it more social. At the same time, it also became a kind of performance: the kitchen had to look tidy, cooking happened in full view, and meals became more elaborate.
Yet greater openness did not automatically lead to a fairer division of labour. The responsibility often remained with the same person. The open kitchen seemed to break the idea of the kitchen as a closed ‘women’s domain’, but the link between women and kitchen work persisted. In fact, because the work became more visible and social, it also became easier to frame it as something natural, cozy, or enjoyable rather than as labour – something famously captured in the US sitcom That ’70s Show.
Female designers
The fact that relatively few women work as designers at major kitchen brands has less to do with a lack of interest or expertise and more with how the industry is structured. Kitchen design is often positioned as technical and industrial work – an area where men have traditionally set the tone. And while kitchen marketing and sales are heavily aimed at women, the sales conversations are often led by men.Women are more frequently directed towards styling, advice, or presentation – roles that are less visible and less influential in shaping products. In that way, the world behind the kitchen reflects how older inequalities continue to shape who designs, who sells, and who is ultimately expected to do the work.
[Anne-Karlijn van Kesteren]
Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the designer of the Frankfurt kitchen.
