The Frankfurt Kitchen Changed How We Think About Housework

Welcome to Origin Story, a series that chronicles the lesser-known histories of designs that have shaped how we live.

If the kitchen is really the heart of the home, it better meet the demands of the era and the needs of those who use it. A post–World War I affordable housing program in Frankfurt, Germany, led to the development of what’s considered the world’s first mass-produced fitted (built-in) kitchen,  devised by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (one of the country’s first female architects). The basic goal of the Frankfurt Kitchen was to make housework more hygienic and less time-consuming for working women, who then as now bore the brunt of the burden of domestic labor. Its compact, standardized design provided a model for kitchens throughout the 20th century, and its guiding principles laid the groundwork for many of the cost- and space-efficient features of today’s cooking spaces. Here’s how it came to fruition.

User-Centric Design

The New Frankfurt housing project, led by architect and city planner Ernst May, had three main goals: Increase postwar housing supply, improve quality of life for working families, and accomplish both of those points efficiently and economically. In 1926, May tasked Schütte-Lihotzky with designing a space-efficient kitchen for the project’s modest apartments. To do so, Schütte-Lihotzky conducted detailed studies and interviews with housewives and women’s groups about what worked and what didn’t work in their existing kitchens.