'First the Kitchen then the Facade'

Technical aesthetics against the disorder of things

“…The debate between Nikita Khrushchev and US Vice-PresidentRichardNixoninfrontofGeneralElectric'smodelkitchen at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959 has become an iconicimageoftheColdWar. 83 Inaspecialvolumedevotedtomid-century kitchendesign,RuthOldenzielandKarinZachmannpresentedthekitchen 'asacomplex,technologicalartefactthatrankswith computers,cars,and nuclear missiles', and more specifically, as 'the sum total of artefacts, anintegratedensembleofstandardisedparts,anodeinseveraltechnological systems, and a special arrangement'. 84 In Soviet society under Khrushchev,themodernkitchenwasanintegralpartofthemasshousing campaign and the site for implementing promises on technological progressandmaterialabundance(theMoscowPioneerPalace,discussedin Chapter1,includedamodernkitchenwheregirlsweretrainedinhousewifery).…”

Hospitality and Home: British and American Cultures of Entertaining

“…Early efforts at rationalizing the burden of the homemaker without staff began with increasing specialization of kitchen design. Historian Ian Bullock has noted that the development of gas-powered lighting and cooking allowed the separation of food preparation from living quarters, and the subsequent replacement of the "living kitchen," celebrated by architect and author Herman Muthesius among others, with the "cooking kitchen" (Bullock 1988). The cooking kitchen bore the influence of "New Housekeeping" advocate Christine Frederick, whose Household Engineering (1919) appeared in Britain in 1923.…”

Uncertain Progress: British Kitchens in the 1920S

“…In Europe, architects and designers had argued for rational configurations of equipment in kitchens to improve efficiency, with the articulation of how this could be done being most evident at the well-attended, and much discussed, housing design exhibitions in Vienna (1923) and Stuttgart (1927). These were showcases for innovations that had been in the making since the start of the decade (Bullock 1988;Hochhäusl 2013). For the Stuttgart exhibition in particular…"the issue of kitchen design and domestic economy loomed large in the organizers' thoughts, with their commitment to rationalization and standardization" (Kirsch 1989: 25).…”