Designed by women and designing women: gender, planning and the geographies                 of the kitchen in Britain 1917-1946

Llewellyn, Mark

doi:10.1191/1474474003eu292oa

Cited by 39 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…That this concern is not a recent one is reflected by feminist utopians in the US calling for the 'socialisation of domestic work' and the creation of 'kitchenless' houses as early as the mid-nineteenth century (Hayden 1978: 275). Also taking a historical perspective, Llewellyn (2004), Saarikangas (2006) and Lloyd and Johnson (2004) highlight the emphasis placed on functionality and how this was translated in practical terms. Although the domestic would remain, unchallenged, as women's domain, the application of time-and-motion principles, the prioritisation of the working triangle (see Johnson 2006 for variations on this) and masculine 5 values associated with industrialisation infiltrated the way in which kitchens were designed.…”

Section: Kitchen Design and The Negotiation Of Domestic Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Crowded kitchens: the ‘democratisation’ of domesticity?

Meah

Jackson

2013

Gender, Place & Culture

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Building on previous work concerning the gendered nature of domestic space, this paper focuses on the kitchen as a key site in which gendered roles and responsibilities are experienced and contested. As men have begun to engage more frequently in cooking and other domestic practices (albeit selectively and often on their own terms), the paper argues that kitchens have become 'crowded' spaces for women. Drawing on evidence from focus groups, interviews and ethnographic observation of kitchen practices in South Yorkshire (UK), we suggest that men's entry into the kitchen has facilitated the expression of a more diverse range of masculine subjectivities, while also creating new anxieties for women.Specifically, our evidence suggests that family meals may be experienced as a site of domestic conflict as well as a celebration of family life; that convenience and shortcuts can be embraced by women without incurring feelings of guilt and imperfection; that cooking is being embraced as a lifestyle choice by increasing numbers of men who use it as an opportunity to demonstrate competence and skill, while women are more pragmatic; ; and that kitchens may be experienced as 'uncanny' spaces by women as men increasingly assert their presence in this domain. Our analysis confirms that while the relationship between domestic practices and gendered subjectivities is changing, this does not amount to a fundamental 'democratisation' of domesticity with significantly greater equality between men and women.

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Section: Kitchen Design and The Negotiation Of Domestic Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Crowded kitchens: the ‘democratisation’ of domesticity?

Meah

Jackson

2013

Gender, Place & Culture

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“…77 Mark Llewellyn's analysis of the gendered geographies of inter-war British kitchens suggested that the attempts of women housing reformers to reshape these locations were informed by principles of Taylorism (or 'scientific management') and aimed at improving the efficiency of the domestic worker. 78 There are certainly echoes of this in the writings of some Sub-Committee members such as Mrs Peel, whose wartime collection, The Labour Saving House, called for the application of 'modern methods to the working of our households, in which they are needed as much as in the office or factory'. 79 Yet, although she drew parallels between the kitchen and the factory where 'the labour of an over-tired worker becomes practically worthless', neither she nor other members of the Women's Housing Sub-Committee considered efficiency to be an end in itself, or connected it to ideas about improving domestic productivity more generally.…”

Section: IImentioning

confidence: 99%

‘From the Housewife’s Point of View’: Female Citizenship and the Gendered Domestic Interior in Post-First World War Britain, 1918–1928.

Cowman

2015

The English Historical Review

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This article explores the work of the Women’s Housing Sub-Committee, a government-appointed body which reported to the Advisory Council of the Ministry of Reconstruction, in recognising the home as a key site where active, respectable female citizens might be produced. The Sub-Committee started work in 1918, a month after the Representation of the People Act gave votes to some British women, prompting a wide debate about how best to integrate them into political life. Charged with reporting on plans for post-war social housing in England and Wales, the Sub-Committee demanded that these homes should be designed from the point of view of the working-class housewife who would occupy them. Through considering the evidence gathered by the Sub-Committee and its responses to the plans suggested by Ministry architects, the paper demonstrates how the sub-committee demanded new spatial configurations that would afford women citizens the space they needed to think and discuss politics while new labour-saving devices–and the room to house them–would free up time for them to develop themselves as active citizens. Finally, it considers how this connection was pursued in the discourse of the three main political parties as they attempted to connect with the rising numbers of women voters in the decade between women’s partial and full enfranchisement.

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“…Thus, the paper expands on a body of work that looks at the articulation of architecture and home (Attfield, , 2000(Attfield, , 2002Blunt, 2008;Busch, 1999;Chapman, 1998;Dowling, 2008;Jacobs & Cairns, 2008;Jerram, 2006;Llewellyn, 2004aLlewellyn, , 2004bLloyd & Johnson, 2004;Miller, 2001b;Munro, 2013;Rapoport, 1982;Ravetz & Turkington, 1995), with a novel focus on the spatiality of this articulation.…”

Section: Exploring the Spatial Articulation Of Architecture With Homementioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating the Modern Cross-Class “Model Home”: Domestic Experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

Santos

Bertolino

2018

Space and Culture

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This article investigates the spatial articulation of architecture and home through the exploration of current domestic experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court housing scheme (1959-1962), Edinburgh. How architecture and home are both idealized and lived is the backdrop for a discussion that draws on the concept of “model home,” or physical representation of a domestic ideal. The article reads Claremont Court as an architectural prototype of the modern domestic ideal, before exploring its reception by five of its households through the use of visual methods and semistructured interviews. Receiving the model home involves negotiating between ideal and lived homes. Building on this idea, the article contributes with a focus on the spatiality of such reception, showing how it is modulated according to the architectural affordances that the “model home” represents. The article expands on scholarship on architecture and home with empirical evidence that argues the reciprocal spatiality of home.

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Designed by women and designing women: gender, planning and the geographies of the kitchen in Britain 1917-1946

Cited by 39 publications

References 4 publications

Crowded kitchens: the ‘democratisation’ of domesticity?

Crowded kitchens: the ‘democratisation’ of domesticity?

‘From the Housewife’s Point of View’: Female Citizenship and the Gendered Domestic Interior in Post-First World War Britain, 1918–1928.

Negotiating the Modern Cross-Class “Model Home”: Domestic Experiences in Basil Spence’s Claremont Court

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