Rationalization

The trend to increasing gasification and electrification continued at the turn of the 20th century. In industry, it was the phase of rationalisation, where work processes were attempted to be streamlined. Taylorism was born, and time-motion studies were used to optimize processes. These ideas also spilled over into domestic kitchen architecture due to a growing trend that called for a professionalization of household work, started in the mid-19th century by Catharine Beecher and amplified by Christine Frederick's publications in the 1910s.
File:Frankfurt kitchen.jpg
The Frankfurt kitchen was designed after Taylorist principles.

Working class women frequently worked in factories to ensure the family's survival, as the men's wages often did not suffice. Social housing projects led to the next milestone: the "Frankfurt kitchen". Born in 1926, this kitchen measured 1.9m by 3.4m, with a standard layout. It was built for two purposes: to optimize kitchen work to reduce cooking time (so that women would have more time for the factory) and to lower the cost of building decently-equipped kitchens. The design, created by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, was the result of detailed time-motion studies and heavily influenced by the railway dining car kitchens of the period. It was built in some 10000 apartments in a social housing project of architect Ernst May in Frankfurt.

The initial reception was heavily critical: people were not accustomed to the changed processes also designed by Schütte-Lihotzky; it was so small that only one person could work in it; some storage spaces intended for raw loose food ingredients such as flour were reachable by children. But the Frankfurt kitchen embodied a standard for the rest of the 20th century in rental apartments: the "work kitchen". Too small to live or dine in, it was soon criticized as "exiling the women in the kitchen", but the post-World War II conservatism coupled with economic reasons prevailed. The kitchen once more was seen as a work place that needed to be separated from the living areas. Practical reasons also played a role in this development: just as in the bourgeois homes of the past, one reason for separating the kitchen was to keep the steam and smells of cooking out of the living room.