Description

“An apartment building where meatballs are being cooked in twenty little kitchens above and below each other, where in each and every children’s room a delicate creature fades in isolation, does it not call out for planned organization, organization in the name of collectivism?”
Alva Myrdal[1]

The idea of Central-Kitchen Houses focused on the centralization and socialization of households and was a radical reform to the culture of living when it emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. It was closely linked to the burgeoning women’s movement and the reorganization of society, salaried working conditions, and the family.[2] To understand the ideas behind the Central-Kitchen Houses, it is important to mention their sources of inspiration. As early as 1878, German socialist leader August Bebel wrote his seminal book Die Frau und der Sozialismus (Woman under Socialism) discussing the role of women and their value in society.[3] Bebel called for collective housing and community facilities as a precondition of true equality for women. It was not only German social democrat Lily Braun who brought these thoughts up for debate at the 1897 Zurich Congress on Labor Safety, introducing an early conception of Central-Kitchen Houses.[4] Hungarian women’s rights activist Rosika Schwimmer also spread the idea of the household as a large-scale enterprise across Europe with her 1909 publication Neue Heimkultur (A New Culture of Home).

The resulting social democratic and bourgeois women’s movement led to broad debate on and examination of ways to relieve the burdens of housework with the help of technology and machines. In many places, this was contrasted by a state of ongoing unhygienic living conditions that necessitated highly time- and energy-consuming housekeeping, all done by hand. Often, neither running hot water nor central heating was available.[5] The growing employment of women, especially prior to World War I, thus increased the need for improved organization and cohesion in the spheres of housekeeping, child-rearing, and employment. The growing women’s movement led to additional areas of equality, such as the right to vote and attend university. At the 1897 Zurich Congress on Labor Safety, Braun pleaded that it was not the removal of barriers to higher education, the courts, or parliament that would free women; rather, she held, being freed from cookstoves and washbasins would enable women to participate in social life, thus reducing their double burden. Despite progress, however, women continued to be denied economic equality, with a married woman still lacking any control whatsoever over marital property.[6] It was thus the husband, the head of household, who was responsible for deciding whether to move into a Central-Kitchen House.

In principle, the economic efficiency of the Central-Kitchen Houses and the reduction in the cost of living by reducing staff can be seen as the primary motivation for shared living.[7] However, the Central-Kitchen House concept can also be attributed to other motives. In addition to the aspiring women’s movement, the abolition of the feudal servant order in the late 19th century also had a significant influence on the development of Central-Kitchen Houses. Servants were now able to demand higher salaries,[8] and new income opportunities arose as industrialization progressed and factory work became available. Now, servants were able to at least partially escape the demeaning work of serving masters and start to establish independent lives.[9] Central-Kitchen Houses can also be seen as a response to a new shortage of servants. Not only were the kitchen and other facilities shared, but, in the sense of “collectivizing the maid”, the servants were shared as well.[10] This collectivization of labor made it affordable for an upper class of society to maintain their standard of living and the amenities of having staff.

Although the Central-Kitchen Houses were initially designed for the working class, a middle-class stratum of well-educated working couples with children emerged as the target group. The shared living spaces of Central-Kitchen Houses were never intended to collectivize the resident families. The Central-Kitchen House typology mostly featured family flats and small apartments, which were closely tied to services, primarily through dumbwaiters. Without meal deliveries and other services, the apartments could not function independently.

The Nordic Model

Central-Kitchen Houses were by no means a phenomenon that appeared suddenly on the timeline of housing history.[11] The idea of Central-Kitchen Houses was broadly supported by earlier concepts upheld by society at large — and by specific circles/groups, such as the utopian socialists — for collectivizing households and integrating women into the paid workforce. For the first time, women took part in housing policy debates, introducing their topics to the discussion through highly effective public relations work.[12] The political climate led several European cities to adopt the idea of, and then actually build, the Central-Kitchen House. The greatest impetus came from the Nordic countries, as employment rates for women in Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands were higher than in the rest of Europe.[13] Indeed, one of the first cases of this type can be found in Copenhagen, the Service House built in 1905, followed by Hemgarden Central-Kitchen House in Stockholm (1907, Georg Hagström, Fritiof Ekman). In Berlin, Lichterfelde-West Central-Kitchen House was designed by Herman Muthesius in 1909. The American House in Zurich (1917, Otto Schwank), Heimhof Central-Kitchen House in Vienna (1923, Otto Polak-Hellwig) and Het Nieuwe Huis Central-Kitchen House in Amsterdam (1928, Barend van den Nieuwen Amstel) were further examples. After initially focusing on Central-Kitchen Houses as a means of sharing servants in order to better reconcile motherhood, family, and work, the debate following World War I began to highlight other economic arguments, such as the cost savings of a large-scale operation versus a small household.

The advancing mechanization and streamlining of home interiors was a primary focus. At the same time, soldiers returning from war displaced many women from their jobs. This trend then declined in the inter-war years, as unstable economic conditions during and after World War I drove women throughout Europe back into the home. The right to paid employment and thus financial independence had not yet been granted, especially to married women, for fear it would create competition for men.[14] Experiences with centrally organized food supply systems during World War I also contributed to ambiguous feelings about collective kitchens.[15] Thus, although it was initially strongly supported by professional circles (the Austrian Oskar Wlach, for instance, created a design for it in 1919 and Le Corbusier in 1922), the Central-Kitchen House concept found itself with a decreasing number of followers in the inter-war years. A handful of Central-Kitchen Houses were built in the 1930s, but only in Sweden, a country in which the crucial importance of the nuclear family remained unquestioned but the division of labor between the sexes was declared obsolete.[16] Examples include John Ericsonsgatan Collective House in Stockholm (1935, Sven Markelius) and Marieberg Collective House, also in Stockholm (1944, Sven Ivar Lind).

The Decline of the Central-Kitchen Concept

The Central-Kitchen House concept did not prevail, nor did it succeed in integrating women into the paid workforce. The model of the man as the sole provider became an established paradigm that remained largely a given until the late 1960s.[17] This development, combined with the marginalization of women in paid working positions, resulted in an effort to educate women to become “thinking housewives” and household experts.[18] As a result of these evolutions and the built Central-Kitchen Houses, which were sometimes only designed and exhibited, a fundamental rationalization of households occurred, impacting collectivized households and, even more dramatically, individual households and their living space design. The most well-known example of this is Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt Kitchen, presented to the public in 1926, which introduced the concept of mass-produced built-in kitchens in private households, a practice still widespread today. Kitchen work was optimized through layouts that focused on functionality and streamlining the organization of work utensils and preparation locations.[19] Schütte-Lihotzky showed three different types of Frankfurt Kitchens at the Neues Frankfurt (New Frankfurt) exhibition: one kitchen for households without servants, one for homes with a housemaid, and one for homes with two maids, of which the first model without servants became prevalent.[20] This led to apartments without shared areas and with autonomous facilities. Built-in kitchens in a separated room became the norm, making the home a place of relaxation for husbands and a workplace for the wife.[21]

At this point, it is important to highlight some of the contradictions and complications in the ideology and organizational structure of Central-Kitchen Houses. Critics suggested that the arrival of Central-Kitchen Houses would only shift, but not eliminate, the dual burden on women, as the predominantly female staff continued to live traditionally.[22] In addition, although they were operated cooperatively, Central-Kitchen Houses still had to generate enough profit to cover the cost of services.[23] Only a well-heeled resident population could afford these costs.[24] However, many women in this higher income class did not pursue gainful employment or had no interest in collectivizing housework and servants. Accordingly, the target audience of Central-Kitchen Houses could only be comprised of middle-class families who were both well educated and well funded. In addition, the socialist parties, and in some cases even the social democratic women’s movement, did not support the concept of Central-Kitchen Houses.[25] Schwimmer reported, for example, that the Social Democratic Party in Denmark strongly opposed institutions such as the Central-Kitchen House.[26] They feared the collapse of the family and a diminished influence on workers who might organize themselves outside of party structures. Due to the above-mentioned economic and political developments, the reform model lost relevance, and after 1945 the Central-Kitchen House and the ideology of dwellings without facilities were forgotten for a long period of time.[27] There were no further developments. It was not until the social upheaval of the late 1960s brought about a further big step towards emancipating women that the concept of the Central-Kitchen House was tentatively rediscovered.

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Originally published in: Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, Margrit Hugentobler (eds.), A History of Collective Living. Forms of Shared Housing, Birkhäuser, 2019. Translation by Word Up!, LLC, edited for Building Types Online.