First Kitchen. Then the Facade

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Design History Society

First the Kitchen: Then the FacadeAuthor(s): Nicholas BullockSource: Journal of Design History, Vol. 1, No. 3/4 (1988), pp. 177-192Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society

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Nicholas Bullock' F i r s t t h e Kitchen-then h e F a c a d e '

IntroductionThe New Dwellingsets for its occupants the task ofrethinkingverything fresh,oforganizing newlifestyle,and of winning freedomfrom the irrelevantclutterofoutmodedhabitsof thoughtandold-fashionedquipment.Likeanythingthat firstappearsunattainable,but thenbecomes ndispensable,he NewHousekeeping, rganizedin keepingwiththe spiritof ourage, is destined o becomea naturalpartof oureverydayife.'For many of the progressive German architects ofthe 192 os the rethinkingof the design of the dwellingwas one of the first prioritiesof the Neues Bauen. Inpublications such as Bruno Taut's Die neueWohnung(I924),2 Behne's Neues Wohnen (I927),3 Giedion'sBefreitesWohnen I 93 ),4 and in the pages ofjournalssuch as Die Form5or Das neueFrankfurt,6die neueWohnung'-the new dwelling-was presented asthe natural setting for family life in the new republi-can era. It was argued that a new pattern of livingwould inevitably emerge as the family was liberatedfrom outmoded attitudes and the inadequatehousingof the pre-war years. The 'neue Wohnung' was tobe the key to this 'neue Wohnkultur'.It is important to recognize, however, that thisideal of the New Dwelling and the new pattern offamily life that it was to accommodate was not theproduct of an architectural rhetoric to be imposedon the housewife. As early as I924 Taut wasemphasizing the need for housewife and architect tocollaborate: 'Der Architekt denkt, die Hausfraulenkt' (the architect thinks, the housewife guides);as the subtitle of his book, 'Die Frau als Schopferin'(the woman as creator), suggested, the housewifewas to play a creative role in shaping the NewDwelling.Taut's insistence on the importance of this rolefor the housewife was really no more than therecognition in architectural terms of demands thathad been presentedfor some time by elements of theGerman women's movement. At a time of nationalshortage and reconstruction when the problems ofhousing were seen to be one of the central issues ofsocial policy, the form of the house was clearly too

important to be left to architects alone. Marie-ElisabethLiiders,an influential member of the BundDeutscher Frauen (BDF)7 and an FDP Reichstagdeputy vitally concerned with housing, proposedtheneed to rethink the form of the dwelling as a firstpriority. This was to begin with the way that thehome was run: architects were to design from theinside out, 'first the kitchen-then the faCade'.8The task ofrethinkingways in which the minimumdwelling so necessary to meeting the housing crisismight be arranged and managed was to bringtogether housewives, architects, housing reformersand experts on every aspect of family life.9The ideasto which they turned to discharge this momentoustask were varied, but can be traced ultimately totwo principalareas of debate: first, the debate withinboth the biirgerlicheand the socialist wings of thewomen's movement on the role of women withinthe home, and, second, to the application of thetechniques of 'rationalization' and 'scientific man-agement' to the running of the home along linesalready being championed in America.

Der neue Haushalt: The Contribution of theWomen's MovementQuestionsof improvingthe efficiencyof housekeepinghad long been a concern of social reformersand thewomen's movement in Germany.10As early as thei88os attempts had been made to teach domesticscience to the wives of working men as part ofa programme of paternalist reform launched byorganizationssuch as the Centralverein urdas Wohlder arbeitenden Klassen, ont of the oldest and mostimportant associations of reforming liberals, or theVerein Arbeiterwohl, a grouping of liberal Catholicindustrialistsbased in Monchen-Gladbach.In Berlin,for example, the Verein zur Verbesserung kleinerWohnungen, founded by members of the Central-verein, had adopted Octavia Hill's system of 'ladyvisitors' to manage their properties and to adviseand educate tenants in the management of their

Journal f DesignHistoryVol. I Nos. 3-4 1988 TheDesignHistorySociety0952-4649/88 $3.00oo 177


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families. From the late I89os until the war theFrauenverein Octavia Hill, closely associated withone of the largest Berlinnon-profit housing societies,the BerlinerSpar-und Bauverein, had run a kinder-garten and offered courses on domestic science totenants of the model tenements designed by AugustMessel on the Proskauerstrasse.By I918 attempts to improve the running ofthe home were no longer restricted to middle-classreformers offering advice to working-class women.After the privations of the war and the difficulties ofthe early years of peace, the operation of even themiddle-class home needed urgent reconsideration.Already at the turn of the century, finding servantscould be difficult: Giinther Uhlig links the rise inGermany of middle-class interest in the forms ofcollective living-the co-operativekitchen, the apart-ment house-that had been discussed in America

since the mid-i89os to the shortage of domesticservants after I9oo.11 After the war the fall in thenumber of those engaged in domestic service is evenmore marked.Prellerrecordsthat by 1907 only 6 4per cent of the total labour force was employed indomestic service, compared with 8-I per cent in1895; by 1925 this figurehad fallen to 4 3 percent,and to 3-9 per cent by 1933.12 In large cities whereemployment opportunities for women were greater,the decline in the number of household servants waseven more marked. During the I920S, women'smagazines such as Fiirs Haus or Die Frau,13 thejournal of the biirgerlichewomen's movement, fre-quently commented on the problemsof coping with-out servants and ran a variety of articles telling thehousewife how to arrange her working routine orhow to make the best use of domestic electricalequipment to ease the burden of running a homewithout servants.In the socialist wing of the women's movement,too, there had been vigorous discussion during thepre-war years of the role of women, particularlyhousewives, in the society of the future. Since Bebel'sDieFrau undderSozialismus I887)14 it had been anarticle of faith that women should enjoy equalrights with men, including the right to work. Undersocialism, women were to be liberated from theirstultifyingposition of subservience within the family,and the state would provide the means-communalfacilities for cooking and the care of children-tomake it possible for women to work outside the178

home. However, sections of the partyassociatedwiththe tradeunions, traditionallythe more conservativeelements of the party, came to oppose these policiesbecause of the damaging possibility that the labourmarket would as a result be flooded with cheapfemale labour. In opposition to the approach thathad originated with Bebel, they called for a differentstrategy for the Frauenfrage.After 1900 a rival ideology, elaboratedby revision-ist writers such as Edmund Fischer in journalssuch as SozialistischeMonatshefte, called for theemancipation of women from the drudgery of somuch of family life but argued that women shouldserve socialist society from within the home.15 InFrauenarbeit nd Familie(I9I4)16 Fischerpressedforchanges to ease the burden of domestic life for thehousewife in order to free her for a more creativerole: her new-found freedom was not to be used inworking outside the home but should be directednow towards nurturing the family, supporting thehusband and educating her children.Thus by the early I920S major elements of bothwings of the women's movement were united in thedesire to see a fundamental rethinking of the role ofthe housewife within the individual home. Armedwith this ideal, they called for a new approach tohousekeeping and the management of the home. Byseizing on advances in the organization of workingproceduresin other fields, by taking up the ideas of'scientific management' which American womenwere already testing in the home, progressive ele-ments of the women's movement hopedto transformthe running of the home and to usher in the age ofrational and scientific housekeeping. This, it wasargued, would not only ensure that the housewifewas seen as having a profession, thus conferringmore prestige on women's work within the home,but would also secure for her a far higher measureof satisfaction from this new creative role.Der neue Haushalt: Rationalization and ScientificManagement within the HomeIn Germany the application of the techniques of'scientific management' and the range of nostrumsfor economic and industrial ills covered by thegeneral title of 'rationalization'had almost acquiredthe status of a national cult by the end of the 1920.1 7Part of this interest drew on German sources. Ideas

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i Pages from ChristineFrederick,ScientificManagementin the Home. The rationalizationof procedures and layout in thekitchen lay at the heart of themovement for scientificmanagement in the home

on standardization formed a natural part of thedebate on rationalization, and German achievementsin this field were in advance of the rest of Europe.Developmentswere greatly acceleratedby the forma-tion of the Deutscher Normen Ausschuss in 1917,an organization charged with the task of settingup norms, Deutsche Industrie Normen (DIN), fordifferent sectors of industry in order to ease theproblemsof war-time production.18During the econ-omic difficulties of the early post-war years the needto standardize was equally strong, and by the endof the 1920s standards had been widely introduced,not only into the building materials and componentsindustry, but also for a range of household goodsincluding all forms of kitchen equipment. Many ofthese standards were the product of the need torationalize the processes of production, but in anumber of areas the formulation of appropriatenorms inevitably involved considering questions ofuse and, in the case of kitchen equipment, of goodhousekeeping practice.However, a more important source of ideas onrationalization was the apparently highly successfulapplication in America of 'scientificmanagement' ina whole range of fields. Henry Ford's biography,publishedin Germanyin January 924, the month of'First the Kitchen-then theFacade'

the stabilization of the Mark,had been an immediatebest-seller; by the end of the decade it had sold over200,000 copies. It suggested to many, suddenly freedfrom the trauma of hyperinflation, the way tosuccess. American management and the techniquesof rationalization had brought colossal success:19surely what had worked for Ford could work inGermany too. At a time of economic reconstructionthe potential of these ideas seemed obvious.To the women's movement the applicationof thesetechniques of 'scientific management' to form thebasis of a new approach to housekeeping was im-mediately attractive. German debates on the newhousekeeping invariably drew directly on Americansources, particularly on Mary Patterson's Principlesof Domestic Engineering (I915)20 and ChristineFrederick'sScientificManagementn the Home21 f thesame year. The latter generated such interest thata German edition was already available by I922;Irene Witte, who was engaged in translating theworks of Taylor and Gilbreth,translated Frederick'sScientificManagementn the Home nto German underthe title Der rationellerHaushalt.22Thus, by the early1920s there was a direct link between the Americandebate on 'scientific' housekeeping and Germanattempts to rethink the running of the home.

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Starting from the 'Twelve Principles of ScientificManagement' as definedby Gilbreth,and committedto the ideal of the housewife working in her ownindividual dwelling, Christine Frederick explainedhow to run the home more efficiently,more cheaplyand, above all, how to manage without the assistanceof domestic servants. For Mrs Frederick as for MrsPatterson, the most essential area for the applicationof the principlesof 'scientificmanagement' was thekitchen. As a reflection of this priorityMrs Frederickaddresses herself first to the kitchen and its relatedactivities. Much of the discussion consists of thedetailed application of Gilbreth's'Twelve Principles'to improve the sequence and to rearrange the loca-tion of activities such as washing up or serving tosave a maximum of time and effort. In a series ofuseful hints masquerading as scientific truths, MrsFredericksuggests the importance of clustering to-gether of pieces of equipment in continual use, ofsetting tables and work surfaces at the right height,and of the proper lighting and ventilation of thekitchen. Much of this is simply common sense. Butof central importance for the discussion of the designof the New Dwelling was her insistence that thekitchen be used only for the preparation of food.All other activities-laundry, cleaning, and generalhousehold activities-were to be excluded:What s a kitchen?It is a placeforthepreparationf ood.All unrelatedwork, such as laundry work, with itsparticular quipment, hould be keptout of the kitchenas much as possible.We see then that a kitchen,or a180

cHr-, ,-I,] 2 Illustrations from ScientificE. Tjl. llManagement in the Home,!,f /,-,,,A ~ contrasting good'with 'bad'l/~ D /"-^ ~ grouping f equipment.^, .

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place merelyfor foodpreparation,an be much smallerthan was formerlythe case when it was used as a combinedsitting-room, laundry and general workshop.23The benefit of making the kitchen smaller wasthat less movement was required to perform thesame job. By defining the tasks to be carried out inthe kitchen first as either 'preparingfood' or clearingaway' and then breaking down these activities intospecificsequences, so that 'foodpreparation'became

'collecting, preparing, cooking and serving foodmaterials', redundant movement could be cut out,simplifyingactivities and thus saving time and effort.Mrs Frederick'smessage was clear: the applicationof 'scientific management' to the problem of thekitchen would result in a saving of space, time andeffort, and essentially the same results would followif the same techniques were applied to the otherareas and activities in the home. Most important forthe design of the New Dwelling, the Europeandesigners reading Mrs Frederick now identified thecooking kitchen as the hallmark of American 'scien-tific' housekeeping.Der neue Haushalt: German Applications of 'Scien-tific' HousekeepingIt might be supposed that the transfer of MrsFrederick'sprinciplesacross the Atlantic to Germanywould have resulted in considerable modification toher ideas. Surprisingly, however, her ideas seemedto be readily acceptable even in the very different

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conditions ofthe Germanyof the early I92os. Indeed,the success of her principles suggests that they wereeasily linked with a number of changes taking placein the role of women in Germany at this time.Two developments are of particularimortance forour account. First, these American ideas were verymuch in line with the new image of the housewifeadvanced by the German women's movement. InDie Frau, journal of the BDF, and in a number ofother magazines which dealt with the home such asFurs Haus, considerableemphasis was placed on thefact that being a housewife was to fulfila professionalrole.24In both the American and the German litera-ture the importance of educating the housewife fornew vocations had long been stressed: the idea of a'domestic science' reflected this notion, and themanuals on home management, with their insistenceon elaborate rituals of cleaning and organizing thehome, furtheremphasized the extent to which therewas a 'right' and a 'wrong' way to go about taskswhich, at least to the uninitiated, might appear quitestraightforward.Naturally, the combination of theseearlier ideas with the principles of 'scientific house-keeping' enhanced the role of the housewife stillfurther. In Die Frau, for example, the housewife'sround of daily chores was elevated to the status ofa full profession: in a series of articles in I922,entitled Die Organisation er Hauswirtschaft ls Beruf(the organization of household management as aprofession), a Dr Thomae elaborated this theme atlength;25 the year before, the influential Marie-Elisabeth Liiders had written a short but powerfularticleasking the rhetoricalquestion 'Hat dieHasfraueinen Beruf?' (has the housewife a profession?).26Even during the mid- and late I920S women'smagazines returned to this theme: in 1927 FirsHauslaunched a series of articleswhich, sandwichedbetween articles such as 'Wie decke ich meinenKaffeetisch im Garten?' (how shall I set my coffee-table in the garden?) and 'Wage ich einen Wittwerheiraten?' (should I dare to marry a widower?),laboured this same theme.27The constant refrain of this type of article wasthat the housewife, be she working-class or middle-class, now had to play a demanding but rewardingrole for which she required education, ingenuity,and creativity. Despite the difficultiescreated by aneconomy in the process of reconstruction, this roleoffered its own non-financial rewards, not least of'First theKitchen-then theFacade'

which would be the extra time that the housewifewould be able to lavish on her husband and children.There is certainly no suggestion that rationalizationof the home would reduce the work of the housewifeto the point where she might go out to work; thepurpose of these innovations was to secure herposition at the centre of the family.The second area of major importancein which theideas of 'scientific management' had an immediateimpact was in the way that the activities of thefamily were now to be arranged within the house.In Germany, as in England,28 here was widespreaddiscussion throughout the I920s on the most appro-priate way to plan the kitchen and the living areasof the working-class home. At a time when solid fuelwas the principal source of domestic heat, housingreformers had championed the 'living kitchen' inwhich the general round of family activities took

place alongside the more specific tasks of cooking,while jobs requiring water-washing-up or laun-dry-were banished to a separate scullery. To pre-war housing reformers battling for the suburbancottage as an ideal form of housing, the 'livingkitchen' was the most economical arrangement, andMuthesius, for example, had presentedan attractivepicture of the Wohnkiche n KleinhausundKleinsied-lung (I 9I 7),29 drawing attention to the importanceof this form of kitchen in the traditional housing ofa number of regions in Germany.However, with the widespread availability of gasfor both lighting and cooking from around the turnof the century,30 it was no longer necessary to usea single source of heat for cooking, heating waterand heating space; it now became possible to movecooking out of the living room either into the sculleryor, in a tenement, into a separate and much smallergalley kitchen. This development was viewed withmixed feelings by many pre-war housing reformers.There was regret at the passing of the traditional'living kitchen', particularly for cottage housing,but support for attempts to introduce into low-costhousing the kind of differentiationbetween activitiesso evident in planning higher up the economic scale.The reformers' notions of propriety were shockedthat the working class should welcome the delightsof sleeping in the cramped warmth of a kitchen, oreagerlyacceptthe lodger'srent in lieu of the supposedbenefitsof privacy.31Afterthe war, with the supportof those in favour of 'scientificmanagement' within181


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Ti ch3 IllustrationsromErnaMeyer,DerneueHaushalt,howing he incorporationf MrsFrederick'sdeas nto German ractice

the home, the case for the Kochkiiche,or 'cookingkitchen', was greatly strengthened; with the ad-ditional support of those members of the women'smovement who were actively involved with thehousing question and concerned to achieve everyform of economy in the construction of publichousing,32 the case for it appeared unanswerable.Suspicious of its associations with a vernaculartradition, the young architects of the Neues Bauenreadily condemned the Wohnkiiche s an inappropri-ate form of kitchen for an urban working class.33Bycontrast, the Kochkichecould be directly associatedwith the prestige products of the modern age suchas the galley kitchens of the Pullman restaurantcars. Was this not the more fitting image for modernpublic housing?The way in which the principles of 'scientificmanagement' were incorporated into the Germandebate is best illustrated by the unprecedented suc-cess ofErnaMeyer'shandbook of good housekeeping,Der neueHaushalt.34First published in I926, it hadalready gone through twenty-nine editions in onlytwo years; by I932 it had reached its fortiethedition with sales of well over 40,000. Yet, althoughexceptionally successful in form and content, thebook was not disimilar to a number of other booksand series of articles on the same subject.Der neue Haushalt opens with a discussion of anumber of well-established themes: the importance182

of increasing the efficiencyof domestic housekeepingfor the national economy; the significance of the'professional'role of the housewife, and the benefitsofher creativeapproachto housekeepingforthe well-

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5 J. J. P. Oud, house, Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart, 1927. Kitchen

being of the whole family. To be a housewife was tohave a true vocation:If thehousewife an learn o masterall this [dailyroutine]then she can win throughto what she most earnestlyneeds:selfrespectnd a high regard orher own activitiesin the home. With this, and with the knowledge of herresponsibilitiesand capabilities, she will ensure for herselfa new pleasure in her work, which will change fromgrinding routine to joyful creativity, so that she will feelher calling to be worth quite as much as any otherprofession.35Meyer hen discusses the impactthat the introductionof 'scientific management' will have on the designof the New Dwelling and considers ways in whichspace and time can be saved here and there through-out the home by more efficientplanning of activitiesor by the use of better equipment. But for Meyer, asfor Mrs Frederick,it is above all the reorganizationof the kitchen that receives most attention. She startsfrom two premises: first, that anything redundantbe removed from the kitchen and, secondly, thatanything retained be put in a position to ensure the'First theKitchen-then the Facade'

minimum expenditure of time and effort. On thesegrounds she condemns the traditional Wohnkicheand presses strongly for the Kochkiche where allactivities not directly connected with cooking areexcluded. Significantly, she illustrates these argu-ments with interiors of houses built by architectsassociated with the Neues Bauen and equipmentdesigned by the Bauhaus. In editions of the bookpublished after 1927, she refers to her collaborationwith Oud on the design of the kitchens for his terracehouses at the Weissenhof Siedlung to show how thenew kitchen and its equipment, designed in line withthe recommendations of the new house-keeping,could combine, in theory and in practice, with theNew Architecture.Most of the arguments that Meyer sets out arefamiliar; her significance lies in the success withwhich she disseminated these ideas. What is import-ant is the extent to which her ideas, and those ofother writers on the same themes, preparedthe wayfor a sympathetic reception for the New Dwelling.From the reportsin contemporary women's journals

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of visits to the Werkbund exhibitions at Stuttgart From the New Housekeeping to the New Dwellingand Breslau, or to the housing estates in Frankfurtor Berlin designed in the modern style, it is clear The connection between the ideas of the New House-that the New Architecture was widely interpretedas keeping and the design of the New Dwelling wasa responseto demands by the women's movement for established before the mid- 92os. In January 1924,an appropriate setting for the New Housekeeping.36 barely a year after the publication of Witte's trans-

:_. ^,0_ ;; ..:_ AL~~~~~~: I I6 Diagrams from Bruno Taut, Die neue Wohnung the new dwelling), showing the application of the techniques of rationalization tothe re-organization of the layout of a typical flat. Top: typical 'unrationalized' apartment block floor plan. Below: 'improved'(rationalized)apartment plan; and detail of 'rationalized'kitchen plan184 NicholasBullock


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lation of Frederick'sbook, BrunoTaut was presentingthese ideas as the direction for the New Architectureto follow.37Drawing on the work of advanced design-ers such as Rietveld,Tessenow and the Bauhaus, heshowed how designers were already treating thedesign of the dwelling in a new and simplified way,and went on to demonstrate how this approach wasof particular value to the problems of low-costhousing. Taut argued that this approach could becarried much further if it were combined with aradical reconsideration of the way in which thehouse was managed along the lines set out by MrsFrederick. Basing his argument on her approach,Taut attacked the layout of the typical German flatand suggested ways in which the unused space ofthe 'best room', derided as 'kalte Pracht' (chillyluxury), could be rearranged to give a much moreintensive use of space. Most important, he showedhow this development of Mrs Frederick's ideas onrationalization in the home might be used to tacklethe question of low-cost housing by reducing spacestandards, and thus costs, but with no sacrifice inconvenience. By the late I920S these ideas oncombining the New Housekeeping with the NewArchitecture had been developed, in the form of DieWohnung ir das Existenzminimum the subsistencedwelling), as one solution to the urgent problemsofthe housing shortage.Parallelsto Taut's ideas can be found in a numberof projects from the early I920s: in 1923 GeorgMuche and Adolf Meyer's approach to the design ofHaus am Horn, the experimental house at theBauhaus's Weimar exhibition, had swept away theconventional divisions between the differentspacesof the house, living room, dining room, and kitchen,in order to allow a wide range of possible patternsof use.38 By the mid-I92os the housing built inFrankfurt under Ernst May, and a number of thehouses on display at the Weissenhof exhibition inStuttgartin the summer of 1927, were incorporatingideas which were the product of the enthusiasm for'scientificmanagement' in the home. But one of themost important and interesting, if little known,examples in this field of the close collaborationbetween architects, housewives' associations, pro-duction engineers, and all those concerned withthe production of kitchen fittings and householdequipment, is to be found in the work of theReichsforschungsgesellschaft fur Wirtschaftlichkeit'First theKitchen-then theFacade'

im Bau- und Wohnungswesen e.V. (Rfg).Thisorgani-zation was founded in January I928 to engage inresearch on every aspect of the design,39 productionand economy of housing, and the background to itsfoundation emphasizeshow strongly it was a productof both the BDF's interests in the home and themovement for rationalization.The Rfg grew out of the amalgamation of a numberof central-government agencies that had been work-ing in this area even before 1924. The Reichskurato-rium furWirtschaftlichkeit, orexample, had alreadylaunched a series of publicity lectures, printed aspamphlets and complete with slides, that dealt withincreasing the efficiencyof housekeeping; titles suchas DieNormungn derHauswirtschaftstandardizationin housekeeping) and Hausarbeit leicht gemacht(houseworkmadeeasy) had alreadyreached a secondedition by I924.40 By 1925 the Deutscher Nor-

menausschuss (DNA), the central institute for stan-dards, had convened a committee to investigatethe standardization of household products whichbrought together expertise from various branches ofindustry and the Reichsverband deutscher Haus-frauenvereine. In August I926 a committee onTypisierungder Wohngebdude, r standardization of

7 GeorgMuche and AdolfMeyer,Haus am Horn, Weimar, 1923.Experimentalprototype for mass-producedhousing, built for thefirst Bauhaus exhibition. Plan, ground floor185


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housing, was set up under the auspices of the DNA,largely at the urging of Marie-ElisabethLiiders andwith powerful support from the building industry,the building trades and government, to considerquestions of economy in design and construction ofhousing. This committee mapped out a field ofresearch, dividing the subject into five major areas;one of these was to focus primarilyon the problemsof the layout of the dwelling, the preparation of'type' plans and the standardization of various ele-ments and components of the home, and was totake into account the views of the housewives'associations and their demands for the rationaliza-tion of house-keeping. After a number of changes inconstitution and membership, the committee wasrenamed, early in 1928, the Reichsforschungs-gesellschaft.Within the Rfg, Committees 4 and 6 workedtogether on questions of house plans (Grundriss-gestaltung) and housekeeping (Hauswirtschaft).41The formersoon produceda study of preferredayoutsfor small dwellings which brought together ideas onthe arrangement of activities within the dwelling(which had originated in a number of suggestive butnot very profoundstudies by AlexanderKlein)42withconstraints on space standardsdeterminedfrom rentlevels and assumptions about household income.However, this committee soon recognized that theresolution of the design of the small dwelling wascriticallydependent on the layout and dimensions ofthe kitchen. Thus the investigations of Committee6on kitchen layout and management became of criti-cal importance for the whole programmeof the Rfg,and this central position was duly reflected in thebias of the papers given at the Rfg's first TechnicalConferencein Berlin in April I929.43After only four months of existence, Committee6had already launched designs for six kitchens whichwere displayed at 'Die Nahrung' exhibition in May1928 in Berlin, and in June it published a review ofthe current thinking on kitchen design.44The start-ing-point for their approach was again the view thatthe kitchen should only be used for cooking andwashing-up. The kitchen was thereforeto be small-indeed this was a necessary virtue to meet thecommittee's fears that a largerkitchen might simplybecome a general family space, or worse still, mightbe used forsleeping. Thereductionin space standardswas to be achieved through the use of gas or electric186

8 German studies of 'good housekeeping': an illustration of thecorrectapproachto washing clothes, from the pamphletHausarbeitleicht gemacht,published by the Reichskuratoriumfur Wirtsch-aftlichkeit

cooking, in place of solidfuel, and the use of speciallydesigned kitchen furniture. The rationale that laybehind the committee's recommendationof the cook-ing kitchen was principally based on economy,hygiene and aesthetics. Not only was the galleykitchen smaller, and therefore cheaper, it was alsoclaimed to be healthier. The committee consideredthe build-upof warm, moist air in the family's mainliving room to be detrimental to health and tofurnishings; they also claimed (quite reasonably)that the persistent smell of cooking or boiling wash-ing was likely to be offensive to the family. Despitetheir advocacy of the Kochkiichehe Committeedid,however, recognize that the simplest house planswere those in which the separatekitchen and diningarea were linked as closely as possible. Accordinglythey proposed a series of designs which included aseparate 'cooking kitchen', a combination of livingand dining room with a cooking recess attached,and even a kitchen with a minimal surfaceforeatingwithin the kitchen; but the large 'living kitchen'was proposedfor use only in rural areas.The kitchens designed by the Rfg convenientlyrepresent the mainstream of current attitudes atthe end of the 192os, but the range of practicalexperimentation carried on throughout the 1920Swas considerableand often highly successful. One ofthe best known, and by all accounts one of the most

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Architects' Department in Frankfurt.47The layoutT- .J... was conceived in terms of minimizingtime and effort.The kitchen, naturally a Kochkiiche,was small inorderto save on the need formovement: the publicityfilm commissioned by the Architects' Departmentshowed how the housewife could reach all the mostimportant things she might need when preparingfood-sink, chopping board, and food storage-froma conveniently placed swivel stool. This aura ofmodernity was further enhanced by designing thekitchen for the use of electricity, the 'power of thefuture': the three kitchens displayedat the exhibitionw, Die neue Wohnungundihr Innenausbau t the Frank-furter Messe in 1926 were all equipped with elec-. tricity, and the Romerstadt Estate, in which theFrankfurt kitchen was extensively used, was pre-:JE"MBI sented as one of the first 'all electric' estates in

a .

9 'TheGasKitchen'-one of the kitchensdesignedbythe Rfgaspartof a studyof kitchendesigneffectiveapplicationsin practiceof the new approachto the design of the kitchen, was the 'Frankfurtkitchen' designed by the Austrian architect GreteSchiitte-Lihotskyand incorporated n a large numberof the dwellingsbuilt in Frankfurtunder ErnstMay.45The principlesunderpinningthe designecho closelythe programmeof the New Housekeeping:Every thinking woman must have experienced the back-wardness of the present ways of running a home andmust recognize in this the principal barriers to her owndevelopment, and thus to that of the family as a whole.The problemof organizing the daily work of the housewifein a more systematic manner is equally important to allclasses of society ... To achieve this, the arrangement ofthe kitchen and its relationship to the other rooms in thedwelling must be considered first.46The kitchen designed by Schiitte-Lihotskyshould beinterpretedas a 'correct' response to MrsFrederick'sdemands for a 'scientific' arrangement of thekitchen; FerdinandKramereven recalls seeing eithera copy of Witte's translation of Frederick'sbook orthe English version itself when he firstarrived in the

io GreteSchiitte-Lihotsky,he 'Frankfurt itchen',1925/6, asinstalledn someof theI92osFrankfurtousing states, ncludingRomerstadt'First theKitchen-then theFacade'

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187

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I I Rationalizationat the Bauhaus: kitchen of a Bauhaus Master'shouse. The format of the illustration as a film strip is reminiscentof those in American studies of rationalization, such as those byTaylor and Gilbreth

Germany. Yet, for all its sophistication, the cost ofthe kitchen was kept low by the use of factoryprefabrication:assembled in a conventional way thekitchen cost (in 1930) just under 400 Marks, butprefabricatedthe cost fell to just under 240 Marks,comparable to the costs of the kitchens being de-signed by the Rfg for low-cost housing.48The success of the Frankfurtkitchen was given thewidest publicity both within Germany and abroad.Catherine Bauer, already greatly impressed by thequality and the scale of the Frankfurt housingprogramme, hailed the kitchen as one of the realachievements of the New Architecture.49188

The Frankfurtkitchen may well deserve its repu-tation, but it must be remembered that the sameprinciples and ideas were being tried out elsewherein Germany.The exhibition of kitchen designs at theWerkbund exhibition in Stuttgart in 1927,50 theexhibition 'Die neue Kiiche' in Berlinin I929 wherethe Ringkichedesigned by Haring and Hilbersheimerwas firstexhibited,51and the range of kitchen designsbuilt as part of the low-cost housing programmesbyOtto Haesler in Celle and Karlsruhe,or by Taut andothers in Berlin, all confirmthe importance accordedto the kitchen as a central issue in the design of theNew Dwelling.The New Housekeeping in PracticeDespite the influence of the New Housekeepingin shaping the approach of architects and othersinvolved in housing during the 1920s, its value inpractice remained limited. Indeed, in two importantrespects the widespread application of the principlesof 'scientific management' can be challenged asinappropriate at a time of national reconstructionand housing crisis.The first line of attack emphasizes the essentiallymiddle-class assumptions incorporated in so manyof the basic attitudes which underpinned the newapproach, and questions their applicability to thevery different pattern of working-class life. Theallocation of different activities to different rooms,the concern for 'privacy', the implications of a'scientific' approach to house-keeping on familyexpenditure, all are very much at variance with thelittle that we know, or can infer, of family life forlarge portions of the working classes. Despite theconditions revealed in the census of 1925 andthe National Housing Survey of 1927, much of thediscussion of the New Housekeeping suggests a totalmisunderstanding of housing conditions at the timefor the vast mass of the urban population: inworking-class areas of Berlin such as Wedding, 53per cent of the population lived in tenements withonly one or two rooms, 43 per cent of all dwellingshad no separate water closet, 81 per cent had noelectricity, and nearly 15,000 people had no homeof their own.s2 For these families the supposedbenefitsof the New Housekeepingmust have seemedhopelessly remote.Secondly, the New Housekeeping was unrealistic

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12 Rationally lannedandequippedivingroom,Weissenhof iedlung,Stuttgart,1927

13 Typical Wohnkuche'n adwelling n a working-classquarter f Berlin, arlytwentiethcentury__*_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.._.=-7-

i .l}^4,4A~ ~ ~ ~ 6 . " "g ~ ~ Y ? j i^I^' ; - ^ ^ , . ~ ~ ~ 1

for all but the affluentmiddle-classamilybecauseof the sheercost of so many of the ideasproposed.Information n household ncomeand expenditureis scantyduringthe Weimarperiod,but the broadpicture hatemergessuggests hat, with an average'First the Kitchen-then theFacade'

annual income of 3,325 Marks for working-classfamilies,andan average ncomeof 4,712 Marks ora white-collarfamily, the cost of a kitchen evenmodestlyequippedor 'scientific'housekeepingwasfarbeyond he reach of most."3189

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14 'Wohnkuche'--I roomdwelling-in a working-classquarter of Berlin, c. 930

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German families. Architects like May, Taut, orHaesler were not engaged in an attempt to foist anarchitectural ideal onto an unsuspecting public. Ourinterpretation of the work of these architects mustnot be distortedby the jaundiced critique of the roleof the architect in public housing since the warwhich is currently fashionable. Whatever its failings,the campaign for the New Dwelling was an attempt,perhaps naive, even foolishly optimistic, to meet theurgent demands of a society in the process ofreconstruction.NICHOLAS BULLOCKUniversityof CambridgeNotesThis article is based on a paper given in the sessionon European design between the wars, organized byChristopher Bailey and Charlotte Benton at the annualconference of the Association of Art Historians in 1983.I E.Schuster,DieneueWohnungund derHaushalt',DasneueFrankfurt,2, no. 5, 1927.2 B. Taut,Die neueWohnung: ie Frauals Schdpferin,eipzig,

I924.3 A. Behne,NeuesWohnen, euesBauen,Leipzig, 927.4 S. Giedion,BefreitesWohnen, urich,1930.5 W. Lotz,'Wohnen und Wohnung', DieForm,2, no. 10, 1927;W. Riezler,DieWohnung',DieForm,2, no. 9, 1927.6 E. May, 'Grundlagen er FrankfurterWohnungsbaupolitik',Das neueFrankfurt, , nos. 7/8, I928; G.Lihotzky, Rationalis-ierungim Haushalt',Das neueFrankfurt,, no. 5, 1927;Schuster, DieneueWohnungund der Haushalt'.7 TheBunddeutscherFrauenwastheprincipal rganizationfthe biirgerliche,r middle-class,women'smovement;for adiscussionof the women'smovement n Germany, ee R.J. Evans,The FeministMovementn Germany, 894-1933,London, 1976; for an account of the Socialistwomen'smovement, ee W.Thonessen,Frauenemanzipation:olitik ndLiteraturerdeutschen ozialdemokratieur Frauenbewegung,1863-1933, Frankfurt, 969.8 The title of a paperbyMarie-Elisabethiidersn DieKiiche erKlein-undMittelwohnung,onderheft o. 2 derRfg,Berlin,1928.9 Fora discussion f the ideasbehind he neueWohnkultur,eeN. Bullock, Housing n Frankfurt 925-I931 and the newWohnkultur',Architecturaleview, une1978.10 Fora discussionof the way in which this earlydebatewas

related o the designofworkers'housing,seeN. Bullock ndJ.Read,HousingReform: heMovementorHousingReformnGermanyndFrance840-1 914, Cambridge,98 5),especiallychapter 8; and G. Uhlig, KollektivmodellEinkiichenhaus';WohnreformndArchitekturdebattewischenFrauenbewegungundFunktionalismus900oo-1933, erlin,1981.II Uhlig, op. cit., p. 53.12 L. Preller,Sozialpolitikn derWeimarer epublik, iisseldorf,1949, PP. 93-4-13 See, forexample,E. Corte, DieWohnungderberufstatigenFrau', Die Frau,Monatsschriftuirdas gesamteFrauenlebenunsererZeit,34, 1926-7, pp. 79-83; M.Weinberg, 'Derideale

Haushalt', Furs Haus, das illustrierteBlatt der Frau, vol. 45,5 June, 17 July, 14 August, 4 September, 1927.14 A. Bebel, Die Frau und derSozialismus,Berlin, 1887; in thissection I have made considerable use of Uhlig'suseful accountof the socialist women's movement and their response to themanagement of the home.15 E.Fischer, 'DieFrauenfrage',SozialistischeMonatshefte,1905,pp. 258-65, quoted in Uhlig, op.,cit., pp. 57-70.I6 E. Fischer, Frauenarbeit ndFamilie, Berlin, I914.17 See, for example, the exhaustive account of the applicationof the techniques of 'rationalization' in the HandbuchderRationalisierung.18 For an account of the German approach to standardization,see W. Hellmich, 'ZehnJahredeutscherNormung', DIN191 7-1927, Berlin, 1927.19 F.W. Taylor,ThePrinciples fScientificManagement,New York,

1911; F. B. Gilbreth, Primerof ScientificManagement,NewYork, 1914; Henry Ford'sautobiography, My Lifeand Work,New York,1922, was a best-seller n Germany.The applicationof these ideas in Germanyis discussed in J. Ermanski,Wissen-schaftlicheBetriebsorganisationndTaylor-systemBerlin, 1925.20 M. Patterson, Principles of DomesticEngineering,New York,I915.21 C. Frederick,TheNew Housekeeping,New York, 1913; and C.Frederick,HouseholdEngineering;ScientificManagementn theHome,New York, 1915; foran excellent account of the debateon good housekeeping in America, see D. Handlin, TheAmericanHome,Architecture ndSociety 1815-1915, Boston,I979, especially chapter 6; and also D. Hayden, The GrandDomesticRevolution,Cambridge,Mass., 1981, pp. 28I-9.22 Der rationellerHaushalt,translated by I. Witte, Berlin, 1922;see also Witte'sown book, HeimundTechnikn Amerika,Berlin,1928.

23 Frederick,HouseholdEngineering,p. 19.24 This theme, labouredin journals (see notes 25 and 26 below),was vigorously championedby the Bund deutscher Frauen asa means of increasing the standing of women within theexisting order of society.25 M. Thomae, 'Die Organisationder Hauswirtschaft als Beruf,Die Frau, 29, 1922, pp. 118-22, 147-I53, i8i-5.26 M-E.Liiders, 'Hat die Hausfrau einen Beruf?', Die Frau, 28,no. 5, 1920-I.27 Weinberg, 'Der ideale Haushalt'.28 See, for example, the discussion in the Tudor Walters Report(Reportof the Committee appointed by the President of theLocal Government Board and the Secretary for Scotland toconsiderquestions of buildingconstruction in connection withthe provision of dwellings for the working classes in Englandand Wales, and Scotland,and reportupon methods of securingeconomy and despatch in the provision of such dwellings),ParliamentaryPapers, 1918, especially chapter 3.29 H. Muthesius, Kleinhaus und Kleinsiedlung,Munich, 1918,pp. 65-80.30 C. Nussbaum, 'Die Ausbildung der Kiichen in kleinenWohnungen', Zeitschrift fiir Wohnungswesen, I, 1902,pp. 165-7, 178-9, I83-5.31 For a discussion of the relationship between the ideals of thehousing reformers and the reality of the working class beforethe war, see L.Niethammer and F.Briggemeier, 'WiewohntenArbeiter m Kaiserreich?',ArchivfiirSozialgeschichte,6, 9 76,pp. 6I-134.32 Marie-ElisabethLiiders, for example, was vigorous in hersupport for the 'Kochkiiche', and the same attitudes werereflected in the pages of Die Frau, for example, G. Linke,'Wohnungsbau und Hausfrauen', Die Frau, 33, 1925-6.

'First theKitchen-then theFacade' 191


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33 See, for example, E. May, 'Grundlagen der FrankfurterWohnungsbaupolitik',DasneueFrankfurt, , no. 7/8, pp. I18-I9; the same attitudes were also held by those outside theRing group: Alexander Klein was a strong supporter ofthe 'Kochkiiche'. See, for example, A. Klein, 'Beitrige zurWohnungsfrage', in Probleme des Bauens, F. Block (ed.),Potsdam, 1928.34 E. Meyer, Der neueHaushalt,ein Wegweiserzu wirtschaftlicherHausfiihrung,Stuttgart, 1928.35 Ibid., p. 3.36 See, forexample, J. Lepmann, 'DieWohnung derberufstatigenFrau in der Werkbundausstellung "Die Wohnung" inStuttgart', Fiirs Haus, 46, 23 October 1927.37 Taut, op. cit.38 A. Meyer,EinVersuchshaus es Bauhauses n Weimar,Bauhaus-buch no. 3, Munich, 1924.39 There is no adequate survey of the work of the Rfg, but anaccount of its foundation and operations and the membershipof the various committees is given in the annual Tdtigkeits-bericht;see also D. Weber, 'Titigkeitsbericht der Rfg', ErsteMitglieder-VersammlungMitteilungender Rfg I2-I5), Berlin,

1928.40 The Hauswirtschaftlicher Lehrdienst des Reichskuratoriumsfur Wirtschaftlichkeitpublished a number of pamphlets (aslectures) on this subject: G.Villwock,Hausarbeiteichtgemacht(Vortrag i), Berlin, 1924; P. Wisotzky, RatschldgeundWinkefiur die Auswahl von Kochgeschirrund Zubehor(Vortrag 2),Berlin, 1924; M. Rudorff,Die Normung n der Hauswirtschaft(Vortrag 3), Berlin, 1924.41 Ibid., p. 9.

42 See, forexample, Klein, 'BeitragezurWohnungsfrage'; Klein'sstudies are illustrated n ProfessorWolfs paperat the Rfg'sfirstannual conference: G.Wolf,'Die wirtschaftlicheBedeutungderGrundrisstypisierung',Erste Mitglieder-VersammlungMitteil-ungen der Rfg No. 13), Berlin, 1928.43 Wolf, op. cit.44 Ausstellung von 6 Kiichen bearbeitet vom Ausschuss der Rfg'Kiichen-undHauswirtschaft',Berlin, 1928; and Die KiichederKlein- und Mittelwohnung SonderheftNo. 2 der Rfg), Berlin,1928.

45 G. Schiitte-Lihotzky, 'Rationalisierungim Haushalt'. DasneueFrankfurt,I, no. 5, 1926-7, pp. 120-23.46 Ibid., p. 120.47 Conversation with Professor Kramer in Frankfurt n 1974.48 E. May, 'FtinfJahre Wohnungsbautitigkeit in FrankfurtamMain', Das neueFrankfurt,nos. 2-3, 1930, p. 39.49 C. Bauer, ModernHousing,New York, 1934, p. I27.50 E. Meyer, 'Das Kiichenproblem auf der Werkbund-Ausstel-lung', Die Form, 2, no. I0, 1927.51 This kitchen was illustrated along with a number of othersby progressive designers in the widely available book byW. Miiller-Wulckow, Die deutsche Wohnungder Gegenwart,Konigstein im Taunus and Leipzig, 1932.52 Die Grundstiicks-und Wohnungsaufnahmeowie die Volks-,Berufs-undBetriebszdhlungn Berlinim Jahre1925, 4, Berlin,

1928, tables 3 and 8.53 These figures, like much of the information on householdincome and expenditure in this period, are drawn from DieLebenshaltungon 2,000 Arbeiter-,Angestellten-,undBeamten-Haushaltungen; Erhebungen von WirtschaftsrechnungenmDeutschenReichvonJahre1927-8 (Einzelschriften ur Statistikdes deutschen Reichs, no. 22), I-2, Berlin, 1932. For a mosthelpful discussion of family income and expenditure, see S.Coyner, 'Class Patterns of Family Income and Expenditureduringthe WeimarRepublic:GermanWhite-collar WorkersasHarbingersof ModernSociety', unpublished PhDdissertation,Rutgers University, I975.54 The cost of fitting up a flat in the modern style can becalculated from Wilhelm Lotz's useful book, Wie richte ichmeineWohnungein? ModernGutmit welchenKosten?,Berlin,I930.55 Die Lebenshaltungvon 2,000 Arbeiter-, Angestellten-, undBeamten-Haushaltungen, pp. 19-20, 31-2, 42-3.

Editors'note: This article was first published in AA Files (Annalsof the Architectural Association School of Architecture), no. 6,May 1984. We are most gratefulto the ArchitecturalAssociationfor permission to republish it here.

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First Kitchen. Then the Facade

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