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How the 'Frankfurt kitchen' triggered a domestic revolution

25 63
28.12.2024

"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.

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

Schütte-Lihotzky came of age during peak industrialization, a time of demographic shift from the countryside to the cities as people sought work in new factories.

But living conditions in the overcrowded, working-class districts of cities in Weimar Germany and Austria, such as Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna, were sometimes characterized by disease, poverty and lack of hygiene.

As a young Viennese architecture student, Schütte-Lihotzky had a unique perspective on the struggles of working........

© Deutsche Welle


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