Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

07.05.2020
modern
modern
modernisme
modern
modernisme
modernitas
 Pin-maker's factory, as depicted in Diderot's Encyclopédie, 1762.
This image was engraved in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
The great hall of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building by Adler & Sullivan, 1893-4.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Administration Building, Buffalo, New York, 1903–6, atrium (left) and typing department (right)
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Frankfurt Kitchen
1897
born in Vienna

1915-1919
School of Fine Arts (today, University of Applied Arts Vienna)
First Austrian woman to qualify as an architect

1921
Worked for the Settlement Office with Adolf Loos as chief architect

1922-1926
Actively involved in Association of Settlers and Allotment Gardeners

1926-1930
Hired by Ernst May to work for the Office of Construction, Frankfurt am Main
Developed New Frankfurt, an affordable housing program (2,000 apartments
were constructed)
“I didn’t yet know the great Heinrich Zille quote, ‘You can kill a
person with an apartment just as well as with an axe,’ but I felt it. I
discovered ever more clearly that in Vienna, next to my world of
middle-class intellectuals and the lives of elites who saw themselves
as standing above the other classes, unbeknownst to me there existed
an enormous social class of hundreds of thousands of people living
out their fraught lives. Though the sources of their misery were not
yet clear to me, I wanted to take up a career where I could contribute
to alleviating their desperation. My decision to become an architect
was finally made for certain.”
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Core-
House Type 7, Fully Completed,
Fifth Building Phase, ‘Small Garden,
Settlement and Housing Exposition,’
Vienna, 1923. The exhibition was a
collaboration between the
municipality and the Association of
Settlers and Allotment Gardeners. 
Core-House Type 7, Fully Completed, Fifth Building Phase, ‘Small Garden, Settlement and Housing Exposition,’ Vienna, 1923.
Worker’s association housing complex (Wiener Werkbundsiedlung), 1930-1932.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, House no. 61 & 62, part of a
Worker’s Association housing complex (Wiener
Werkbundsiedlung), 1930-1932.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky with her colleagues of the Construction
Office of the city of Frankfurt am Main. The office was directed by
Ernst May.
Various images of housing projects (part of New Frankfurt) by
the Construction Office.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Frankfurt Kitchen (1926)
Catherine Beecher, The American Woman’s Home (1869)
Siegfried Giedion: “Organization of the work process emerged toward the end of the ‘sixties. Catherine E. Beecher had grasped
the essentials of the trend.”
 Reyner Banham: “It [Beecher’s house] seems to introduce for the first time the conception of an unified central
core of services, around which the floors of the house are deployed less as agglomerations of rooms, than as free
space, open in layout but differentiated functionally by specialized built-in furniture and equipment, thus
anticipating the basic functional organization of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion house of 1927. These innovations
are so radical and so original that [James Marston] Fitch has no compunction in drawing parallels between the
American Woman’s Home and the European modern architecture of the 1920’s.”
Christine Frederick, The New Housekeeping: Efficiency Studies in Home Management (1913)
 1. Pantry drawers + pull-out cutting boards
2. Pots and pans storage
3. Table
4. Sink
5. Drawer
6. Drawer
7. Oven
8. Haybox / thermal cooker
9. Countertop
10. Heating unit
11. Broom closet
12. Chair
13. Food cabinet
14. Garbage container
Common kitchen Frankfurt kitchen
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Frankfurt Kitchen (1926)
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Frankfurt Kitchen (1926)
CIAM II, “The Dwelling for Minimal Existence” (1929)
A type of New Frankfurt housing exhibited at CIAM II, “The Dwelling for Minimal Existence” (1929)
1930-1937
Worked in the USSR with May, developed plans of the cities of Magnitogorsk,
Novokusnezk, Makeewka, Karaganda, Prokop’evsk-Tyrgan, Leninsk, Masinostroj,
Boboslavsk, Avtostroj; plans involved collectivization of typically feminine tasks,
such as feeding and children’s education.

1937-1938
Left the Soviet Union, moved to Turkey. Developed teaching centers and
typification of rural schools. Joined Austrian anti-fascist group in Turkey.

1940-1945
Joined the Austrian resistance in Vienna; arrested by the Gestapo.
The Berlin tribunal requested death penalty, but finally sentenced her to 15 years
of imprisonment.
Liberated at the end of the war, 1945.

After 1945
Worked in various countries: Bulgaria, Cuba, China, Austria.
Joined the Union of Austrian Democratic Women and the Association of Survivors
of Concentration Camps and Resistance.

1988
Rejected “Austrian Honor Title of Science and Art” in upon learning that she
would receive it from president Kurt Waldheim (former officer of Nazi army)

2000
Died in Vienna, cause: complication after flu
 “I am not a kitchen. Had I known that
everyone would only talk about this
damned kitchen, I would never have
invented it.”

A reconstruction of the Frankfurt Kitchen in the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna.