Part 1: Domesticity.
When ploughing through the Irish Builder and Engineer a few years ago, I was intent on researching new building typologies of the ‘20s and ‘30s, and the way they were experienced by the public. On the periphery of this, it seemed to me, there was a hazy potential for a ‘women’s history’ of the subject as well – although the source material for this would have been outside of that partcular journal. There was rarely a mention of women / women architects but one thing was predictably apparent: women were connected to the home and, in advertising, they were represented as having authority when it came to the interior design of their home. In the art deco era ‘woman’ was emblematic of the new visual styles. So not only were women represented in domestic settings (wielding a vaccum cleaner) but they were also illustrated dancing on sprung maple floors, or on polished rubboleum. They were leaning against glittering shop counters and gossiping with their friends as wealthy consumers. On the one hand they were attached to their labour saving devices and on the other they were glamorous sirens.
Women architects too were mentioned in relation to the design of the modern domestic kitchen. Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky was the most famous innovator in that regard, using time and motion studies to ensure optimum efficiency. She led a design team working on Ernst May’s neue Frankfurt in the 1920s and the design (known as the Frankfurt Kitchen) was rolled out across the soviet union (10,000 of them). She was frustrated that all anyone remembered about her work was ‘that damned kitchen’, realising that it reinforced the bias of women being connected to the home, and the kitchen stove, and that a female architect would therefore know best (Bois & Reinhold, 2023, p. 12). In the Irish Builder I came across the same observation about a woman architect’s involvement in the design of an Irish house. Lihotzky had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and was part of the new architectural movement to provide hygienic housing to prevent the spread of the disease. Her concept for the kitchen design was to treat it as a finely tuned hygienic component which would slot into the floor plan and avoid wasted time and wasted money.
Apparently some have criticised the design as not being liberating for women, because the time and motion studies make the connection with factory work, where the user becomes a machine-like drudge. However, historian Paul Overy argues that the design was body-centred and proportioned to suit the body (in order that one doesn’t need to waste energy) and that it wasn’t designed to be manned or ‘womanned’ all day, but only for short bursts of activity (2007, P.96). It wasn’t designed to be the centre of the home (as we tend to think of it in a strangely romantic way today) but it needed to work for the user (a machine or tool for living, if you like). It wasn’t a space for lingering and feeling downtrodden!
Recently I saw an Instagram video of the TV personality Sarah Beeny, as she demonstrated her dishwasher cutlery tray-emptying method. She swiftly dumps the contents straight into a vast drawer, looking very liberated indeed. I admired her carefree use of the machine as a labour saving device. It was an interesting new representation of woman and domesticity.
The next part should look at dancing, when I get around to it.
Citations:
M. Bois & B. Reinhold (2023) Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky: Architecture. Politics. Gender is available on Google Books with a limited preview.
Overy, P. (2007) Light, Air & Openness: Architecture Between the Wars. Thames & Hudson.
nova: vintage treasure 