This paper traces a history of war-induced scarcity through the material and technological properties of household appliances and kitchens from 1914 to 1930. Investigating the Austrian settlement and allotment garden movement, it argues that the practices of users, self-help builders, and inhabitants who reacted to living with limited resources in the state of emergency found their way into the designs of modern homes, and into the works of canonical modern architecture, in particular the famous Frankfurt Kitchen. This paper thus investigates the design and production of the modern kitchen and its transformations, from Vienna to Frankfurt, moving from a cooperative vernacular building movement to one of the largest construction endeavors to standardize and prefabricate modern housing in Germany.
In the late 1980s, when the classification of her papers at the archives of the
University of Applied Arts in Vienna was under way, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky,
then more than eighty years old, was asked to comment on the collection that would
encompass her life’s design work. With a blue pen she overwrote previous
descriptions, corrected dates, and added names and places. On the back of one
document she remarked, ‘Who wrote this nonsense?’
It was this supplemental material that caught my attention when I visited the
collection in 2012. In particular, two sets of documents depicting kitchens held
extensive remarks by Schütte-Lihotzky. In the first set she had scribbled over
two rough photocopies of canonical views of the Frankfurt Kitchen, which showed its
‘stove complex’ and ‘wet complex’, and outlined each of its
architectural elements (Figures
Photocopies of the Canonical Views of the Frankfurt Kitchen with Remarks by Schütte-Lihotzky, Schütte-Lihotzky Inheritance, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive, Sekundär Küchenmaterial, PRNR 50/46/TXT.
Early in the 1920s, the young Margarete Lihotzky had already begun to rationalize her
designs:
In Frankfurt, Schütte-Lihotzky would advance her kitchen designs in similar
terms, but there they would be implemented on a large scale. Standardized and
prefabricated, from 1925 to 1930 Frankfurt Kitchens became the core of 10,000 German
households in the extensive undertaking to develop affordable housing, under the
direction of the architect and city planner Ernst May.
Since then, and in the historiography of modern architecture, Schütte-Lihotzky
has been praised for the Frankfurt Kitchen’s motion studies tracing bodily
movement in the workspace. She is also known for having introduced industrial
advancements in scientific management to the domestic realm through standardization
and prefabrication. The rational plan of the Frankfurt Kitchen, it was long assumed,
benefitted working-class people, and especially working-class women in their
everyday environments.
My main concern in this paper revolves around similar issues: the modern
kitchen’s design and production, its evolution (in three different phases),
and the design input by its architects and users. The three places and periods in
which I discuss the modern kitchen are Viennese allotment gardens (1914–1918),
Viennese settlements (1918–1925), and Garden Cities in Frankfurt
(1925–1930).
To make these details visible, I match a largely structural reading with intricate
spatial analyses, situating the kitchen in its specific economic, cultural, and
institutional environment, while at the same time charting it architecturally in
close-up, not unlike a micro-history.
I stress this point because the prominent architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri
dismissed settlements as a radical housing typology in his seminal discussion on
Viennese housing politics,
Lastly, and from a methodological standpoint, I have tried to bridge what I perceive as a schism in the discipline of architectural history that produces two distinct types of scholarship. The first examines designs, architects, and their intellectual environments, while the second investigates the appropriation of designs by consumers and users within the larger field of material culture. In this essay, I have insisted on the overlap of these histories, drawing out their convergence and intertwining; in the realm of modern architecture, Schütte-Lihotzky’s work, which was a critical response to larger pressures of its time, stands as a case in point for this overlap. Therefore, when I turn to Schütte-Lihotzky, it is not to contribute yet another piece to an already voluminous scholarship on her legacy in the realm of the kitchen, but rather to investigate the greater context in which the kitchen emerged. Schütte-Lihotzky’s overriding comments in the archives stand at the beginning of this research that questions if and how the development of the modern kitchen and each of its design elements were shaped by users, designers, and builders in a specific historic moment of scarcity and crisis. It remains an architectural irony that the flexible kitchen turned into a static entity the moment its adaptable appliances were perfected.
In Vienna, mobilization for World War I in July of 1914 happened overnight and it
required all available resources immediately. For the first few days, it was thought
that war could be averted altogether. When it began, it was hoped that it would be
over in a matter of months. A plan for a long-term military engagement was not in
place and neither was one for its tactical beginning. In fact, mobilization was so
rapid and so chaotic that, according to State Secretary of Alimentation Hans
Loewenfeld-Russ, it changed the physiognomy of city within only a few days.
He was right. Scarcity in Austria was not predominantly caused by an actual lack of
resources but by a dysfunctional distribution system. Yet throughout the war, the
gaps in this system could not be filled, and in Vienna, this meant dramatic
shortages, which were most severely felt when it came to foodstuffs. Over the course
of the next four years, the municipality, the federal state, and the empire
established countless decrees, programs, and institutions to combat food shortages.
In addition, war rationing cards for basic staples were issued by
Loewenfeld-Russ’s office; only a few months into the war, in April of 1915,
those foodstuffs included flour and bread, and later in the year, sugar, milk,
coffee, and lard. In 1916, rationing cards for potatoes and marmalade were given
out, and cards for meat followed in 1918 (
Amongst immediate solutions to keep pots and pans at least half full were subsidies to build and maintain allotment garden colonies in the city, which allowed people to plant their own vegetables in the urban environment. A few allotment garden clubs in Vienna had already existed before the outbreak of the war (less than 2,000 plots altogether), but, largely operated by members of the Viennese bourgeoisie, they were predominantly driven by concerns for health in the metropolis and maintaining a balanced, nutritious diet. The war shifted these concerns to counting calories with charts and statistics in order to survive.
The food crisis also dramatically increased the size, extent, and number of allotment
garden colonies in the city. In addition, the tasks of handling subsidies, leases,
and insurances brought about a change in the administrative structure of allotment
gardeners’ representation and led to the creation of an overarching
cooperative organization. A loose group of allotment gardens had existed since 1914,
but in the summer of 1916, thirteen allotment garden clubs founded the Verband der
Schrebergärtenvereine (Association of Allotment Gardens), which actively
promoted the lease of new properties and the planned distribution of garden plots in
consultation with the city.
A special factor in driving these changes was the
In this condition of scarcity, magazines and newspapers were full of strategies and devices for surviving the war with limited resources. In fact, ‘endurance’ and ‘willingness to sacrifice’ were commonly heard expressions at the ‘home front’ in Vienna, and getting by with less was advertised as a necessary civilian contribution to the war. For allotment gardeners and war produce gardeners, who were in many cases a little better off than the average citizen, this meant testing productive techniques and making use of available materials in the garden and around their sheds.
Discussions on horticulture, harvesting and food conservation to advance everyday
life in the garden had long been at the heart of allotment gardeners’ national
and international meetings, but local responses to immediate pressures were
increasingly important as the war progressed. As early as June of 1915, under the
headline ‘Kriegsernährung’ (Wartime Alimentation), allotment
gardeners had published novel cooking techniques and strategies for living through
the state of emergency in their new monthly periodical
In February of 1916, an article entitled ‘Der Kochbeutel’ (
Such problems concerned allotment gardeners as well, who had to carry water and fuel
from shops and wells to their gardens. The construction of the hay box as well was
consistent with common practices in the allotment garden where bee-keeping devices,
barns, and even garden huts, which were used as temporary dwellings, were
constructed through self-help with simple discarded objects. Adding a hay box to a
‘kitchen’ in a shed, which usually consisted of simple countertops and
basic spirit burners, meant great technological improvements.
The authors of the cookbooks themselves argued that even in times of austerity the
core stock of the Austrian cuisine could be maintained, and, through simple
ingredients, dishes of vegetables and meats, even cakes, could be enjoyed with the
help of the hay box. One recipe in
Similarly to cookbooks, construction manuals illustrated in detail and with urgency
how hay boxes could be constructed from simple wooden boxes, rumpled newspapers,
kindling, or sawdust for insulation, which every allotment gardener would have found
at home or in the community (Figure
Hay Box, ca. 1914,
For all of these reasons,
In reality, of course, scarcity was war-induced, and what was propagated as a virtue
— living with minimal resources — had become an absolute necessity as
people struggled to survive. As resources in the city dwindled, life in the garden
grew harsher as well. Already in July of 1915,
But despite all battle cries on the home front, despite laws, decrees, and philanthropic programs, nothing helped. Towards the end of World War I, exhausted and deprived of proper nourishment, the population was depleted and the lack of bodies at the actual front grew severe. In Vienna, food shortages were still critical. They forced people into the municipal parks where they informally started to plant produce and raise livestock to sustain the elderly and the children. When these spaces reached capacity, people moved to the outskirts and began squatting on fallow land. This was how 40,000 Viennese became ‘settlers’.
The aftermath of World War I was characterized by drastic political change. On
November 11, 1918, the Habsburg monarchy, which had existed for more than six
hundred years, finally collapsed, and Austria was proclaimed a republic. In May
1919, all women and men in Austria were given the right to vote, and in the election
for the city parliament in Vienna the Social-Democrat, Jakob Reumann, won the
mayoral election with an absolute majority of 54.2 percent. In 1920, Vienna gained
independence from rural Lower Austria and became its own federal state. With this
independence, for the first time the city was able to enforce its own tax
jurisdiction. This resulted in the creation of a high luxury and housing tax that
specifically targeted the bourgeoisie. Between 1920 and 1934 these taxes enabled
progressive social, educational, and health reforms and the vast construction of
large communal dwellings called
Yet in the months following the end of the war, despite all efforts, food and housing
shortages were still severe. In the winters of 1918–19 and 1919–20, the
Viennese population was starving again (
Throughout the years of World War I allotment gardeners had been increasingly self-reliant, planting produce and breeding small animals, and their thorough organization had been successful in maintaining relative order in the city. Even in times of tumult, allotment gardeners’ association — controlled on the club, district, municipal and national levels — had negotiated contracts with the city, advertised open plots, and planned new colonies, from systems of circulation and infrastructure down to clubhouses and sometimes even individual huts. Squatting settlers, in contrast, who had obtained their properties illegally and relied completely on their own resources, building with makeshift materials, were an annoyance to the owners of large estates. A form of representation largely based on self-help, but in accordance with the municipality, was therefore seen as a model to coordinate permanent housing for settlers as well while continuing to plant produce.
Unofficial squatter settlements had sprung up all around the city’s periphery
and lacked concentration. Originating in various economic and social backgrounds,
settler communities consisted of returning soldiers, workers, widows, impoverished
bureaucrats, and even former aristocrats. This diversity was therefore an obstacle
in organizing settlers, compounded by the dispersal of their groups, especially when
organizers aspired to create a common consciousness among members. While allotment
gardeners had made a point of excluding questions of religion and class from daily
business in the gardens, settlers’ growing associations lent themselves to
organization along the lines of cooperation heavily theorized by Austro-Marxists at
the time. This was also welcomed by the elected Social-Democratic government, which
in the immediate aftermath of the war encouraged cooperative forms of
self-governance. Over the next five years, 100,000 people who lived in shacks formed
230 settlement clubs with 40,000 official members (
In this function Neurath was interested in translating the mechanisms of a war
economy into peacetime, allotting limited materials methodically. He also sought to
foster cooperation which had grown in informal settlements among members. Between
1919 and 1921, Neurath and Hans Kampffmeyer, who had been active in the German
Garden City movement, structured the organization of the Austrian Settlement and
Allotment Garden Association accordingly and planned events and rallies for
financial support by the municipality. Although the elected Social-Democratic
government was sympathetic to settlers’ needs from the beginning and made
arrangements for initial support, tangible economic and political commitments
resulted from a demonstration in April 1921, when settlers voiced their concerns to
the city. On banners they wrote, ‘What you give to the settlement, you will
save in unemployment support’, and ‘Give us land, wood and stone and we
will make bread from it!’ (
The latter demand, for food, was still a major concern of the municipality, which had
been unable to supply produce and dairy products for the Viennese population, since
the loss of the crownlands. The architect Adolf Loos, who had been active in the
settlement movement as early as 1918, recognized this problem as having potential
for providing a way out of settlers’ predicament. In support of the rally, on
April 3, 1921, he wrote an article in
A nation’s nourishment is determined by the foodstuffs that the cultivated
land supplies. Only today do we become aware that [the Austrian] cuisine was
possible, because an amalgamation of states [
But Loos had a solution to the problem and it involved adaptation; ‘all things
that have belonged to the iron stock of Viennese cuisine for centuries must be
replaced by local foodstuffs’.
On the same day, the Vienna city council passed legislation that had long been
favored by the Social-Democrats to provide an extensive building fund to the
settlements. Mayor Jakob Reumann personally spoke to settlers in front of the town
hall, assuring them of his full support. He granted the construction of additional
settlements, quick expropriation proceedings, distribution of necessary building
materials through the cooperatively owned Gemeinwirtschaftliche Siedlungs- und
Baustoffanstalt, or GESIBA (Cooperative Settlement and Building Material
Association), and a supply of machines and tools. In addition, the legislation
envisioned the creation of certain municipal entities, including the city’s
In constructing homes, settlers were not only inhabitants but builders. In the
tradition of self-reliance, they created their own homes by contributing 2,000 to
3,000 hours of labor to the construction of each new community. Once a settlement
was completed, each family obtained a share of the communal infrastructure and was
granted a house according to its size. To avoid costly alternatives in the
construction process, settlers capitalized on readily available materials and simple
building techniques, privileging more labor-intensive practices — for example,
firing brick with material excavated from foundations. Throughout construction,
settlers also maintained their individual gardens, which provided food not only for
them but for the city as well; in 1923, settlers and allotment gardeners covered
Vienna’s entire demand for produce (
To restore national pride and prosperity, the municipality exhibited settlers’
and allotment gardeners’ achievements to the Viennese public. While settlers
and allotment gardeners had showcased their homes and products for years at local
housing exhibitions and produce fairs, in 1923 their promotional efforts culminated
in the large Viennese ‘Kleingarten- Siedlungs- und Wohnbauausstellung’
(Small Garden, Settlement and Housing Exposition). The exhibition featured hundreds
of exhibits of produce, dairy products, small animals and flowers in the arcades of
Vienna’s town hall. According to
Her three exhibited settlement homes, titled core-houses ‘Type 4’,
‘Type 7’, and ‘Type 52’, however, had a specific feature. As
types, they all adhered to a similar modular construction system that could be
expanded over time and built outward from a small ‘core’. The process of
enlargement worked like this: In the first phase, a minimal
Core-House Type 7, Fully Completed, Fifth Building Phase, ‘Small
Garden, Settlement and Housing Exposition,’ Vienna, 1923.
Photographer: Joseph Perscheid, Vienna. Source: Schütte-Lihotzky
Inheritance, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive,
The heart of the undeveloped core-house Type 7, built on 45 m2 and on two
floors, was the live-in kitchen (Figure
Live-In Kitchen, First Stage of Construction, Core-House Type 7, Shown at ‘Small Garden, Settlement and Housing Exposition,’ Vienna, 1923. Photographer: Joseph Perscheid, Vienna. Source: Schütte-Lihotzky Inheritance, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive, PRNR 34/19/FW.
The living area of the kitchen also offered comforts. A bench could be converted into
a bed at night and furniture could easily be shifted when more space was needed.
With a tiny adjacent bedroom and an extra bed for a small child in the master
bedroom upstairs, core-house Type 7, even at its most rudimentary stage, could
accommodate a family of six or seven people if necessary. This was a true
maximization of space. And yet behind the curtain of the live-in kitchen lay the
future: a larger house with a new kitchen, with a cooking-niche and a fully
prefabricated scullery (Figure
Cooking-Niche and Scullery, Fifth Stage of Construction, Completed Core-House
Type 7, Shown at ‘Small Garden, Settlement and Housing
Exposition,’ Vienna, 1923. Photographer: Joseph Perscheid, Vienna.
Source: Schütte-Lihotzky Inheritance, University of Applied Arts
Vienna, Collection and Archive,
The cooking-niche had fourteen fixed elements. They were rationally organized and
stood in direct relationship to one another. In addition to the stove, the cooling
counter and the hay box, which remained in the live-in kitchen, the niche had a
laundry stove, a preparation table, a washing trough, a box for collecting kitchen
wastes for the animals or compost, a dish draining board, a drawer for special
utensils, a sink, another hay box with additional drawers, a water conduit with
swivel tap, ten running metres of shelves for kitchen equipments, and even a tub.
All elements were poured in one concrete block. The floor was cast in concrete as
well. Cleaning was easy (
There were little tricks as well. The dish draining board could be put in an inclined
position so that dishes would dry more quickly. When completely folded out, it could
function as a small table for food preparation. Similarly the laundry stove, could
also be converted into counter space, when its kettle was covered with a plane
wooden lid. On the bottom, the laundry stove had an outlet that dispensed hot water
to fill a bucket for the tub. The tub in the kitchen was not ideal, but it was
assumed that the funds and the space for a separate bathtub and an oven to heat it
were not available to the settler. A collective bathhouse was anticipated. If it
were built, the space of the tub could be utilized as a cooling device or additional
cupboard space (
As early as 1922, Lihotzky registered the cooking and washing niche with
Vienna’s Kammer für Handel, Gewerbe und Industrie (Chamber for Trade,
Business and Industry), and it stood in a long line of devices she developed over
the years (
Already in 1922 its design caught professional attention at a smaller settlement
exhibition where the cooking-niche and the scullery were showcased. The chief of
Austria’s Siedlungs- Wohnungs- und Baugilde (Settlement, Housing, and
Construction Guild), George Karau, praised the design for its spatial rationality
and the alleviations it would bring to women cleaning the kitchen. ‘This very
attractive space’, he wrote, ‘will serve to prepare meals for large
families and corresponds, through the considerate selection of advancements, to the
novel cooking habits of the housewife’ (
I have worked through your plans meticulously and regard them as a critical step
in the direction of practical household rationalization. The single laws that
the science of home management has given us, such as time and motion efficiency
[
A year later, at the housing exhibition of
Core-House Type 7, Floor Plans in First and Fifth (Completed) Building Phase.
The Lower Illustration shows 1 ½ Core-Houses Type 7, On the Left a
Core-House and on the Right the Completed House in Building Phase Five.
Source
The response to the exhibition from the Austrian press was positive, and in most
articles Lihotzky’s core-houses were featured prominently. ‘For weeks we
have been awaiting the opening of the exhibition to see what a core-house looks
like’, said an article in the workers’ newspaper
The connection between the design of core-houses and the Viennese problems of
scarcity and general dwelling conditions was most clearly drawn in the British
newspaper
In July of 1923 Otto Neurath had similarly attested, in
The director of the settlements office, Max Ermers, on the other hand, saw in
core-houses, and their cooking-niches in particular, another potential more closely
constructed along capitalist lines. In 1924, he wrote,
Nonetheless, the core-houses did not become a commercial success. While
Schütte-Lihotzky had paid great attention to saving time, labor and materials,
and the live-in kitchen embodied the spirit of flexibility, the fully prefabricated
cooking-niche was not only formally alien to the settlers’ environment —
a novelty that may have contributed to the hype among professionals — but it
was also conceived and produced by wholly different means. Although GESIBA
advertised that it could prefabricate core-houses and their kitchens, having to pay
for them in cash was difficult for settlers. Accustomed to paying for houses by
putting in their own labor time and using appliances that allowed them maximum
flexibility, settlers simply could not be persuaded to make such a large, static
purchase. In fact, Loos had often insisted that it was ‘completely wrong to
have an architect design furniture for the settler’. ‘The family could
always grow’, he argued (
Settlements in Frankfurt were different from those in Vienna. Although Frankfurt was
also faced with grave housing shortages that were aggravated in Germany by postwar
migration from the occupied Alsace territories, the city’s large building
program began in the middle of the 1920s at a time of economic boom. In extent the
building program put forward in Frankfurt was similar to the large communal housing
projects undertaken in Vienna, but, unlike in Vienna, the dominant typology in
Frankfurt became settlements.
To implement projects on such a scale, May and his employees developed prefabricated
and standardized elements of an unprecedented character. Compared to Vienna, where
prefabrication had only meant the use of standardized wooden beams, doors, and
windows, in Frankfurt prefabrication incorporated reinforced concrete beams, walls,
and even entire dwelling units. They were lifted and shifted with cranes and other
modern construction equipment, and assembled by salaried workers. Mounting
procedures were standardized as well (20). When she joined May’s team in 1926,
Lihotzky’s tasks in Frankfurt involved the standardization of many components
for buildings and apartments as well. But her first assignment was to perfect the
kitchen.
Kitchens for ‘the New Frankfurt’ home consisted of a fixed set of
seventeen items that were strikingly similar to the list of Vienna: stove, cooling
counter, hay box, fold-out ironing board, food cupboard, swivel chair, table, waste
bin, dish draining board, sink, food stock drawers, pot cupboard, broom cabinet,
radiator, fold-out cooling counter, glazed dish cupboard, and plate frame. The first
three items, the stove, the cooling counter and the hay box, were again grouped
together as stove complex and located on the opposite side of the long main working
space, the wet complex. The arrangement was directly copied from Vienna’s
core-house live-in kitchen: The cooling counter even had the same two drawers.
Because the Frankfurt Kitchen operated with gas, the former stove’s firewood
and ash drawers were now converted into an oven and an additional space for storage
below. The third element, the hay box, was rotated, with its shorter side now facing
the cook (Figure
Frankfurt Kitchen, Stove Complex with Hay Box (On the Far Right), Frankfurt, 1927. Photographer: H. Collischonn, Frankfurt. Source: Schütte-Lihotzky Inheritance, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Collection and Archive, PRNR 50/15/FW.
But there were some new elements in the Frankfurt Kitchen that had not existed
before: the fold-out ironing board, the suspended dish rack and most notably the
food stock drawers, which Schütte-Lihotzky had developed with the German
aluminum company Harrer. The sink, faucets and pot cupboard were also made in
cooperation with companies and could be serially manufactured (
Importantly, Schütte-Lihotzky also responded to technological changes and
reacted to them in the Frankfurt designs. She included a radiator and a gas stove,
which meant no more cooking with firewood. Gone was the kettle, which had heated
water in the cooking-niche, as well as the bathtub, which had been the most bulky
element in Vienna’s cooking-niche. A bathtub filled by hot water from the sink
was now located in the adjacent room. These were not small changes; in fact, these
amenities stood at the core of the designs for New Frankfurt. They were part of an
extensive central municipal undertaking to rationalize housing built into a smooth
infrastructural system. This system included the production of architecture through
factories planned by May and his team to distribute not only materials, but also
everyday amenities such as electricity and central heating (
Nonetheless, the Frankfurt Kitchen was not a ‘modern’ kitchen from
today’s point of view. First, it still lacked a refrigerator. In the absence
of a totally dry or cool space, a special drawer was coated with tannic acid to
ensure the storage of flour in large quantities. The cooker hood, which did not
operate electrically, also incorporated a creative solution to a yet unresolved
problem of ventilation: the insertion of a little tube as a direct conduit to the
outside. Finally, because electrical fly-traps were still too expensive, the
Frankfurt Kitchen was painted in a special blue, which, according to studies, was a
color that deterred flies (
In 1927, three versions of the Frankfurt Kitchen were shown at ‘The New Dwelling and Its Interior Design’, one of the city’s largest exhibitions. One version was designed for a ‘minimum dwelling’, and two others for a household with one or two maids. Although the most luxurious version, for two maids, was never realized under the auspices of New Frankfurt, its conception indicated that these kitchens served an audience that could afford servants and was thus quite different from inhabitants in Viennese settlements, many of whom had been unemployed and poor. In addition, in the more prosperous years of Weimar Germany the considerations for scarce resources waned.
The public once again received Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchen favorably. Her
designs were published in
Commercially, the kitchen was a success as well. Serially produced and standardized,
it came with many of New Frankfurt’s apartments. However, Frankfurt’s
inhabitants and users in part resisted the Kitchen. Accustomed to working and living
in the same space, they tried to fit their chairs and family dinner tables into the
Frankfurt Kitchen, just as the Viennese had used the cooking-niche for storage and
continued to utilize the living room for cooking (
‘How can we translate to housework the principles of labor-saving, economical business management, whose implementation has led to unexpected increase and productivity?’ Lihotzky had asked in 1925 (15). Along the lines of standardization, prefabrication and mechanization, the Frankfurt Kitchen, that ‘laboratory for housework’, was the answer to her question, and indeed it had perfected spatial tricks, to maximize the use of the home’s centre. All of its elements had gone through countless iterations, making the Kitchen a masterpiece of flexibility. Yet an important variable — people — had been increasingly left out of the Frankfurt equation. Omitted from consideration were the whims, idiosyncrasies, and desires of people to always restructure, re-envision and reinvent their homes according to their own tastes and needs, even if only by adding small, new, and flexible technologies. When such needs were best served by simple wartime appliances (such as the hay-box), which were translated into the design of Vienna’s live-in kitchen, Vienna’s cooking-niche responded little to such strategies. In Frankfurt, however, which represented the perfection of the arrangement of adaptable household appliances, such flexibility had become an impossibility.
Manfredo Tafuri was right — funding for settlements was cut in Vienna in 1925
when the municipality introduced the communal dwelling, the
Yet, from a theoretical point of view, settlements in Vienna provided a wholly new
model of organizing and producing housing for the public. In fact, the settlement
model found its way into the architecture of the
Settlements were, however, produced in a more radical manner than the
Asked to compare her work in Vienna and Frankfurt in an interview in 1980,
Schütte-Lihotzky also stressed that production processes were quite different.
She attributed the difference to the specific condition of scarcity during the war,
which had partially been translated into peacetime. She said, ‘Vienna began
its housing policy as early as 1919–20, at a time of severe economic
depression in which there did not exist a developed building industry in the
aftermath of the war. Frankfurt had begun it in 1926, at a time of booming business
activity’ (
In Vienna the goal was to provide, as quickly as possible, a humane roof over the
heads of the poor. In Frankfurt, the task was to set an example for modern
living with the most progressive means of contemporary technology, because a
modern building industry had emerged there, including all necessary experiments.
Building in Vienna was more primitive; therefore, solely live-in kitchens and
cooking-niches and no bathrooms, but public baths in each block, central
laundries, but no central heating. There were club libraries and meeting rooms
to enable a social life, something which could not even be discussed in
Frankfurt at all. The average inhabitant of the Frankfurt settlements wanted to
be distinguished from the neighbor, wanted to lead an individualist life without
discussing common problems, without the wish to build cultural and a better life
for all together. (34)
Apart from a largely individualist way of life that distinguished the inhabitants of Frankfurt from the Viennese, according to Schütte-Lihotzky, economic backgrounds were also distinct. The Viennese housing subsidy, largely financed by extensive taxation, made all the difference (33). Tax revenues made it possible to finance dwellings for the poor with good amenities on a vast scale. The situation was much different in Frankfurt, where the tax burden was placed on the lower class, which the building program was supposed to target in the first place. ‘A worker, even a trained one, could not afford [the apartments]’ (33), said Schütte-Lihotzky:
Only from the factory foreman, the white-collar worker and the intellectual
upwards were such rents manageable. […] Thus a condition emerged in which
the ones who carried the main part of the housing taxation did not even get to
live in those apartments. For all of these reasons even the points of departure
for the housing projects in the ’20s of Vienna and Frankfurt were
completely different. (33)
Thus, while Frankfurt’s housing policies de facto excluded the people for whom
affordable housing had been initially intended, the social organization of the
production of architecture in Vienna ensured its success. As Schütte-Lihotzky
explained, ‘Housing in Vienna was first born out of a movement from below,
which became the motor for a common social life for years to come. In Frankfurt, by
contrast, it was an elite of progressive-liberal politicians’ (34).
A new form of organizing the production of architecture had come into being through
self-help and cooperation, as an immediate response to the postwar state of
emergency. Settling was therefore not simply a working-class response to the
conditions of scarcity, but a process by which formerly petty bourgeois groups of
people were united around joint interests, creating a common consciousness, as
Neurath had envisioned. With its cooperative supermarkets, kindergartens, and
building companies, and imbedded in large organizational complexes such as housing
unions and multiple levels of representation, the settlement movement even surpassed
counter-capitalist strategies of the nineteenth century constructed along class
lines and moved into the realm of the early twentieth century.
Although I have suggested in this paper that there existed many parallels, continuities, and relationships between Vienna and Frankfurt, the two cities could not have been more different in terms of their building programs’ production. Vienna became the embodiment of a ‘slow’ version of modern architecture achieved by local materials and through cooperation, while Frankfurt represented a core, high-tech modernism that perfected industrial production in the domestic realm on a large scale. In Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchens, in a rudimentary state, the worlds of Vienna and Frankfurt collided as well. But in times of prosperity, while Frankfurt characterized the century to come, Vienna fought a losing battle.
In this essay, therefore, Vienna and Frankfurt were not places between which Lihotzky moved in 1925, but architectural paradigms that already encountered each other in 1923 — in the ambiguous zone between the simple live-in kitchen and the first prefabricated cooking-niche. Despite its manifold connecting vectors, this zone marked a great divide. On one side stood a modernism that encouraged messy participation, while the other drew on prefabrication. The former privileged the garden over the dwelling, small, flexible technologies over mass production, and, of course, cooperation over prefabrication. They were deeply related yet contrary worlds. The line between them ran along a curtain in core-house Type 7.
The text read ‘Wer hat so einen Unsinn hingeschrieben?’on the back of the archival document of 1923: Kernhaus Type 7, Archival Document, University of Applied Arts, Vienna PR NR 34/14 FW.
Throughout this paper, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky is referred to as Lihotzky when she was not yet married to Wilhelm Schütte. Lihotzky married Wilhelm Schütte in 1927. At the time of her early work in Vienna, she was unmarried. I want to thank Mary McLeod who brought this issue to my attention and advised me on the matter.
The figure of 10.000 is used in many sources. See, for example,
Schütte-Lihotzky and Noever (
‘Frankfurt Kitchen’ is capitalized throughout this paper, as is the canonical work’s short form of ‘Kitchen’, to avoid confusion with other kitchens and the general term kitchen.
The notion that the Frankfurt Kitchen was designed to aid the working class woman
has been repeated time and again, most recently in Peter Noever and Renate
Allmayer-Beck’s
Schütte-Lihotzky’s legacy was discussed by Mary McLeod at the
These time periods correspond with the print-run of the allotment
gardeners’ and settlers’ periodical in Austria and with the
print-run of
The German ‘Siedlungen’ in Frankfurt are translated as Garden Cities,
to avoid confusion between them and Austrian settlements. Although the German
example is more famous and is often translated as ‘settlement’, this
paper retains the word ‘settlement’ for the Austrian
‘Siedlungen’, since they were actually based on the process of
settling — seeking out land, occupying it (in many cases unlawfully), and
obtaining it through legal procedures. In addition, in Germany, the word
‘
Urban stresses the antithetical nature of the allotment garden movement and modern city planning in Berlin.
This relates in particular to Carlo Ginzburg’s understanding of a
micro-history, his notion of clues, and the Morellian method outlined in
‘Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm’ (
In the section ‘Una polemica: Siedlung contro Hof’, Tafuri dismisses
an in-depth discussion of settlements, arguing that in realpolitik the
Tafuri writes, ‘Come hanno osservato Bobek e Lichtenberger, la piccola borghesia e vasti ceti popolari, agendo al di fuori dell’iniziativa comunale, invadono in modo disorganizzato gli spazi periferici, con casette unifamiliari casualmente insediate, al di fuori di ogni struttura complessiva e di una adeguata struttura di servici. “Vienna rossa” rivela così nuove aporie. Da un lato i monumenti proletari, gli Höfe, localizzati ai margini del nucleo urbano; dall’altro il proliferare incontrollato di Siedlungen realizzate dagli stessi ceti cui si indirizza la politica residenziale del comune. Tale dualismo corrisponde peraltro a un vivo dibattito cultural. La Siedlung contro lo Hof’.
Tafuri asserted that the housing policies of Red Vienna failed to produce a typology that escaped bourgeois tropes and the logic of capital when read along Marxist lines.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire’s forty-eight-hour ultimatum to Serbia was
delivered on July 23, 1914, at 6:00 p.m. It was published on July 24 in
The full passage reads, ‘Unser häuslicher Herd ist nicht nur durch Waffengewalt bedroht. Er soll zum Erkalten kommen, dieweil es doch zwecklos wäre, ihn für leere Töpfe und Pfannen zu heizen. So stellen sich das unsere Feinde nämlich vor. Seitdem sie uns aushungern wollen, ist es geradezu Ehrensache geworden, durch ein klug geführtes Küchenregiment dazu beizutragen, dass diese menschenfreundliche Absicht eben nur Absicht bleibe. Das Kochen ist also eine höhere Aufgabe geworden’.
The association’s full name was Verband der Schrebergärtenvereine aller im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreiche und Länder (Association of Allotment Gardens Clubs of all Kingdoms and Countries Represented in the Imperial Council).
The periodical was the official voice of the allotment gardens at Rosenthal and Mariabrunn, which were among the first formalized allotment garden clubs in Vienna. The text from page 1 reads: ‘Bei der letzten Mitgliederversammlung in Flemich’s Restaurant wurde über Einmachen und Einsieden von Gemüse und Obst, dann über die Kochkiste und Kochbeutel Vorträge gehalten’.
‘Kochkiste’ literally translates to ‘cooking box’. In English, standard translations for ‘Kochkiste’ are ‘straw box’, ‘hay box’, ‘insulation cooker’, ‘retained-heat cooker’, or ‘fireless cooker’.
In ‘Der Kochbeutel’, the author writes, ‘Zu empfehlen ist er [der Kochbeutel] ferner — gleich seiner Vorgängerin, der Kochkiste — überall dort, wo niemand Zeit hat, sich um die Zubereitung des Essens zu kümmern. Nutzen, erspart er doch der Hausfrau, die sich jetzt vielfach ohne Dienstmädel behelfen muss, viel Mühe und Arbeit’ (7).
The author of ‘Der Kochbeutel’ again: ‘Die Damen in den Arbeitskomitees der Frauenhilfsaktion zum Beispiel, die mit den Armen und Ärmsten ihrer Mitschwestern zusammenkommen und in allen Lebenslagen Rat und Hilfe schaffen müssen, haben den Wert des Kochbeutels praktisch erprobt, besonders für diejenigen ihrer Schützlinge, die als sogenannte “Bettgeherinnen” keinen Kochherd zur Verfügung haben und sich im besten Falle auf einem kleinen Spiritusbrenner ihr armseliges Mahl bereiten können. Spiritus aber ist derzeit ein so teurer Artikel, daß mit jedem Tropfen gespart werden muß’. (7).
Many allotment garden colonies did not have elaborate irrigation and sewage systems well into the 1970s, and operated solely with wells.
Titles translated into English by the author:
Joachim writes, ‘1. Die Kochkiste erspart Zeit. 2. Die Kochkiste erspart Brennstoff. 3. Die Kochkiste erspart Lebensmittel. Alle Lebensmittel, besonders die Mehlarten, quellen unter der Einwirkung der gleichmäßigen und anhaltenden Wärme besser auf und werden daher für den Magen besser vorbereitet. Da Übergehen, Einkochen, Zerkochen und Anbrennen in der Kiste ausgeschlossen ist, gehen dabei auch bedeutend weniger Nahrungsmittel verloren. 4. Die Kochkiste erspart Geschirr, welches nicht so lange der Herdhitze und dem Ruß ausgesetzt bleibt; es erfordert deshalb auch seine Reinigung weniger Zeit und Mühe’.
See note 15. The editors wrote, ‘Wir empfehlen solchen Vorträgen – speziell in diesen schweren Zeiten – und insbesondere der Kochkiste vielmehr Aufmerksamkeit zu schenken, da eine gute Hausfrau nie genug lernen kann’ (1).
See note 17. The anonymous authors wrote, ‘Erst der Krieg erwies sich sogar auf diesem Gebiete als Lehrmeister und führte die langverkannte Kochkiste nicht nur in Haus uns Vereinsküche, sonder auch draußen im Felde ein’ (7).
The anonymous author wrote about ‘Kriegsernährung’: ‘Darum wollen auch wir, die wir nicht auf dem Schlachtfelde mitkämpfen, einen Platz in den Reihen der Kämpfer ausfüllen, indem wir möglichst viele Kaninchen und Hühner züchten und dadurch dem Gelingen des Aushungerungskrieges die Möglichkeit nehmen’ (5).
Otto Neurath described the scenes of Vienna’s town hall as follows: ‘Mit Wagen, Automobilen, und Musik rückten die Kleingärtner und Siedler an, die im Zuge charakteristische Tafeln mit ihren Forderungen trugen: “Was ihr den Siedlungen gebt, erspart ihr an Arbeitslosenunterstützung.” “Gebt und Land, Holz und Stein, wir machen Brot daraus”’.
Loos wrote, ‘Wir müssen uns eine eigene nationale Küche schaffen. Die böhmischen Knödel, die mährische Buchteln, die italienischen Schnitzel (frittura), lauter Dinge, die jahrhundertelang zum eisernen Bestand der Wiener Küche gehörten, müssen durch heimische Nahrungsmittel ersetzt werden’ (10).
Loos’ economic assessment had partial grounding in statistical reality, since the settlers’ gardening activities indeed had yielded 1,000 wagons of produce in 1923, which, according to the Settlement and Allotment Garden Association’s chairman, Adolf Müller, had to be imported in 1918.
Loos became chief of the settlement office in 1921, but resigned prematurely from his tenure in 1924.
The editors of
The usage of such waste materials was first brought to my attention in an interview with small gardeners in 2011.
Lihotzky wrote the about the bathtub, ‘Es soll hier nicht als besonderes Ideal hingestellt werden, dass sich die Badewanne in der Kochnische befindet. Es ist aber leider dem jetzigen Bau der Siedlungshäuser nicht anzunehmen, dass Raum und Geld für Badewanne und Badeofen vorahnden sind. Sollte dies der Fall sein oder sollte ein gemeinsames Badehaus errichtet werden wird die Wanne in der Küche natürlich überflüssig und der Platz der hierfür bestimmt ist kann für den Waschtrog, Ladeneinbau oder Kühlvorrichtungen Verwendung finden’.
George Karau wrote in his assessment of the kitchen, ‘Der äußerlich sehr ansprechende Raum genügt zur Zubereitung der Mahlzeiten auch einer vielköpfigen Familie und trägt unter vorsichtiger Auswahl der Neuerungen den Küchengebräuchen der Hausfrau Rechnung’.
Witte’s Institute was called Untersuchungs- und Forschungsinstitut für
Arbeitswissenschaft und Psychotechnik. The German version of the book was
translated by Witte in 1922 and was titled
Witte wrote in her personal letter to Lihotzky, ‘Ich habe eingehend Ihre Pläne durchgearbeitet und betrachte sie als einen entscheidenden Schritt vorwärts in der Richtung der praktischen Rationalisierung des Haushalts. Die einzelnen Gesetzte die die Arbeitswissenschaft uns stellt, wie Zeit- und Bewegungsersparnis, Materialersparnis und zwangsläu\en Durchlauf der Arbeit sind gerade in Ihrer Kochnischen- und Spülkücheneinrichung in bester Weise befolgt worden. Ich wünsche dass Ihre Pläne weitgehend verwendet und verwirklicht werden können, da sie gerade heute, wo wir fast in der ganzen Welt im Zeichen der Wohnungsnot stehen, in der Lage sind, dieser ein wenig [gegen] zu steuern’.
The excitement about the new architecture was captured in the text: ‘Das Hauptinteresse der Ausstellungsbesucher wird sich natürlich den Siedlungshäusern zuwenden, die auf dem Rathausplatz entstanden sind. Die Kernhausaktion der Gemeinde Wien wird es vielen, die heute vielleicht nicht einmal eine eigene Wohnung besitzen, ermöglichen, zu einem Häußchen zu kommen. Seit Wochen erwarten sie mit Spannung die Eröffnung der Ausstellung, um zu sehen, wie ein Kernhaus aussieht’.
See note 31.
Otto Neurath stressed the importance of cooperative entities in coordinating the building program: ‘Es besteht die Möglichkeit, durch den Verband und die Gemeinwirtschaftliche Siedlungs- und Baustoffanstalt, als Zentralstellen in dieser schweren Krisenzeit den Kleinwohnungsbau planmäßig weiterzuführen. Eine Reihe von Baugenossenschaften, deren große Bauprojekte nicht fortgeführt werden können, hat bereits die Errichtung von Kernhäusern begonnen’.
Max Ermers wrote this about an updated version of the cooking-niche, called ‘Wirtschaftsnische’, which was exhibited in 1924.
Loos insisted that the settler’s house had to remain adaptable: ‘[M]an kann nie sagen: ja, wir haben nur buben, oder: wir haben nur mädchen; es kann doch ein familienzuwachs stattfinden. Da muß sich das siedlerhaus für alle späteren möglichkeiten eignen’.
In retrospect Schütte-Lihotzky attested that some people could not get used to the new ways of living: ‘Während sich diese Wohnform in anderen Ländern gut bewährt hat, konnten sich unsere Hausfrauen nicht daran gewöhnen, die Kocharbeiten in einem anderen Raum vorzunehmen als in demjenigen in dem der Herd stand. Alle Arbeiten, oft sogar das Geschirrspülen, wurden schließlich im Wohnraum gemacht und die Spülküche als Rumpelkammer verwendet’.
Vienna did in fact conceive of such a comprehensive plan approximately at the
same time, in the form of the housing policies of Red Vienna. A first bill for
the construction of 25,000 apartments was passed in 1923. Red Vienna, however,
capitalized on the large
A continuity in Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchen designs not only existed in Vienna and Frankfurt, but it developed throughout many projects.
The authors wrote, ‘Spüle, Wasserhahn, die Vorratsschütten aus Aluminium, die Tropfschrankeinteilung und ähnliche aus der Industrie gefertigte Elemente konnten mit Firmen, […] perfektioniert werden’.
Schütte-Lihotzky: ‘Wien begann mit dem Wohnbau schon 1919–1920, in einer Zeit der größten wirtschaftlichen Depression, in der es, unmittelbar nach dem Kriege, noch keine hochentwickelte, moderne Bauindustrie gab. Frankfurt begann erst 1926, in einer Zeit der aufsteigenden Konjunktur’.
Schütte-Lihotzky: ‘In Wien war es die Aufgabe, möglichst rasch den minderbemittelten ein menschenwürdiges Dach über dem Kopf zu schaffen. In Frankfurt war es die Aufgabe, ein Beispiel für zeitgemäßes Wohnen zu geben, mit den fortschrittlichsten technischen Mitteln der damaligen Technik; denn dort hatte sich inzwischen eine moderne Bauindustrie entwickelt, einschließlich aller dafür notwenigen Experimente. Deshalb baute man in Wien primitiver, deshalb nur Wohnküchen oder Kochnischen, deshalb keine Badezimmer, sondern allgemeine Badeanstalten im Großblock, deshalb Zentralwäschereien, deshalb keine Zentralheizung. Aber dafür Klubbibliotheken und Versammlungsräume in jedem Großblock, um ein gesellschaftliches Leben zu ermöglichen, etwas, worüber man in Frankfurt gar nicht diskutieren konnte. Der durchschnittliche Bewohner der Frankfurter Siedlungen wollte sich lieber vom anderen abgrenzen, wollte lieber ein individuelles Leben führen, ohne über allgemeine Probleme zu diskutieren, ohne den Wunsch, gemeinsam ein kulturelles und besseres Leben für alle aufzubauen’.
Schütte-Lihotzky: ‘Das konnte eine Arbeiter, auch der gelernte, nicht bezahlen. Erst vom Werkmeister aufwärts, für Angestellte und Intellektuelle waren solche Mieten tragbar […] So ergab sich der Zustand, dass diejenige, die den größten Teil der Hauszinssteuer aufbrachten gar nicht in den Genuss der Wohnungen kamen. Aus all diesen Gründen war schon der Ausgangspunkt für den Wohnbau der zwanziger Jahre in Wien und Frankfurt völlig verschieden’.
Schütte-Lihoztky: ‘Daran war erkennbar, dass der Wohnungsbau in Wien ursprünglich durch eine Bewegung von unten entstanden ist, die Treibkraft für ein gemeinsam-gesellschaftliches Leben auf Jahre hinaus geworden ist. In Frankfurt hingegen war es eine Elite fortschrittlich-liberaler Politiker’.
Arguably Neurath’s strategies to organize settlers’ endeavors moved away from organization along class lines as outlined by Karl Marx.
Neurath’s ideas on cooperation and community that focused on the creation of cultural institutions and an economy based on use-values could arguably be compared to Antonio Gramsci’s ideas on cultural hegemony.
This research was made possible by a fellowship from the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies, a fellowship from the Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban and Landscape Studies, and a grant from Cornell’s Society for the Humanities and The Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.