How the 'Frankfurt kitchen' triggered a domestic revolution

How the 'Frankfurt kitchen' triggered a domestic revolution – DW – 12/27/2024

Around a century ago, working in the kitchen was still cumbersome and inefficient. But then a Viennese architect had a groundbreaking idea that has endured to this day: the fitted kitchen.

"If I had known that I would have to talk about this damned kitchen for the rest of my life, I would never have built it!" said 100-year-old Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky in an interview in 1998.
The kitchen she designed in the 1920s rewrote architectural history and revolutionized the lives of public housing residents by creating a newly functional, fitted culinary space.
Dubbed the "Frankfurt kitchen," Schütte-Lihotzky created a piece of pioneering social architecture that has defined kitchens to this day.
The designer was also a women's rights activist and was celebrated as a heroine of resistance against the Nazi dictatorship.

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was a architectural pioneer with a conscience

Image: Ulrich Schnarr/dpa/picture alliance

Schütte-Lihotzky, who died in 2000 at the age of 103, aimed to improve the lives of others through her work throughout her life.