Kitchen - Body - Work
Act I: Cooking

The kitchen as a performative space is a place of actions. These actions are performed by the body - still usually understood as female bodies in the domestic realm. Looking at decades of Swiss Magazines such as «Bauen+Wohnen» the sentence «the woman performs most of her household chores in the kitchen, therefore the kitchen becomes the most important space for her.»(1) resonates. Throughout its history the kitchen has changed its colors, sizes, meaning many times and has turned in the last century to an object of status from a space of work. The connotation as a «female space» still sticks. The kitchen as a space negotiates between the connotation of gender-specificity and models of living together and becomes also in terms of environmental question a space of political debate: «Daily cooking must be understood as public, as well as private.» (2). The kitchen acts as a hinge between the outside and the inside, since everything that is being prepared inside it, points back to a landscape it came from. It could even be understood as a reflection of the values of a society.

The actions in the kitchen start from preparation to serving and the term «cooking» is generally used to describe them all, although «to cook» is just one part that is performed in the kitchen.
Cooking is a daily ritual, a daily work of care and maintaining a family or a household. Who cooks for whom, when what and where, has clearly a social but also a spatial meaning.

In 1851 Gottfried Semper declared the fire place as the first element of architecture: Where the community gathers, the place that provides warmth and food. The kitchen was not the place for a single body, rather the shared «heart of the house». For quite some time the kitchen stayed integrated within the family space as most of the household actions were also performed inside the house. But during history this fire slowly moved away from the center of the household space and with modernization of housing, efficient pipes and plumbing was pushed to the wall. The different disposition also affects the position of the body.

Looking at the kitchen through the lens of the body, norms, standards and ergonomics become visible. In the early 20th century with the studies of Christine Frederick, who worked with the Taylorist idea of optimizing time used for work and then in the 20s the Frankfurter Küche from Margarethe Schütte-Lihotzky the kitchen space was brought down to a minimum. The minimal space should enable minimal motion sequences: The kitchen turned into an efficient space, the «Laborküche». Although this aimed to minimize the household workload of the newly working women, it actually placed her alone as a single body in the kitchen. With this minimization also the act of cooking and the act of eating separated again in space.

Swiss kitchens were no exception in these developments. With the emergence of the American kitchen in Switzerland technologies and devices - like the refrigerator - the performativity of the kitchen changed again, but throughout the years its typology oscillated somewhere between the minimal 6.5 square meter of the Frankfurter Kitchen and the Wohnküche that regained popularity. As new models of kitchens arrived in Switzerland, the country started to position itself within the discourse. 1946 at the 3rd Frauenkongress held in Zurich the «Schweizerische Institut für Hauswirtschaft» was founded. Discussions already started in Berne at Saffa 1928. With the founding of the institute Switzerland «finally joined the ranks of those countries that are addressing this eminently important area of problems for the entire housing and house construction sector on an independent basis and according to scientific principles.» The institute asked for: «a) promotion of rational household management b) useful mechanization of private households and farms c) valuing of work as housewife.» (3) Within its concerns was the optimization of working conditions and therefore the quest for the perfect measurements for the kitchen workspace. The Göhnerküche - ideal and standard - and kitchens from Franke formed an important part of this quest. With the development of those new types, working with materials like Bakelite, wood and especially steel the «kitchen of the future» emerged that was in many regards better than the American one. If people of the 50s still believed the American kitchen was ideal, they had to be proven wrong.

The postwar period Hans Hilfiker developed SINK or SMS, the «Schweizer Mass System» with its ideal measures of 90-60-55 for Therma. The Euronorm (EN1116) was introduced years later. The main difference lies in the height of the working counter, that is 90 cm. The height is split in 1/6-measurements, while 1/6 equals 127mm. Six 1/6 make the height of the counter, the maximum height of the whole kitchen is 18 times one 1/6, which means 2.30 m. That corresponds to standard Swiss room height of 2.40 m. The depth of the counter is 60 cm, what is considered the average arm length. Standardization had a potential to «design freely» in social housing and as the kitchen was understood as a dirty place it was also used to «get families out of the habit of eating in the kitchen by making it as small as possible.» (4)

With the emergence of the «Schweizerisches Insitut für Hauswirtschaft» the labour of the housewife started to be looked at as work. Within the rationalization processes that where concerned with the health of workers in factories, also the kitchen the working space for the housewife had to be re-thought. Studies of the 60s also revealed that the calories burned by housework corresponded to those of a heavy bodily work. (5) Also with a workload of around 60-85 hours a week, the female household workers worked 1.5 billion hours while the male workers of the Swiss industry «only» worked 1 billion hours. (6) Female bodies and minds had to be kept healthy as « a happy family and a content husband relied on her mental and physical wellbeing». The kitchen industry was sure: «The travailed housewife is not the partner the husband wishes for.» Therefore the design and appearance of the kitchen had to be linked to the female body. This meant dimensions, sizes and motion sequences, but also colors and light. Objects as the swivel chair were introduced to enable working in a seated position which was better for the back of the housewife. Others advised «Sometimes it's enough to put on flat loafers instead of high-heeled shoes.» Actions as peeling potatoes, cleaning vegetables or stirring dough could be easily performed seated. (7) The correct spatial organization of each cooking action ensured a reduction of the workload. (8) If the light in the kitchen was unsatisfactory, the female eyes and nervous system was subject to unnecessary stress which led to fatigue, headaches, burning eyes, dizziness and irritability. (9). Similar effects were associated with the wrong color of the kitchen: The studies of the 60s claimed red was a no-go, while green and yellow had positive effects on her working conditions. (10) Today the colors of desire are rather grey, or white, but red, orange and blue are increasingly setting accents.

Out of these discussions architects as Eduard Neuenschwander introduced the «Atelierküche» a type of kitchen that was «even more a general human concern; it wanted to offer the housewife the opportunity to develop her own, joyful lifestyle.» This kitchen was not only a technical, economically and psychologically functional and artistically tangible workplace for the housewife and family mother, but also a room in which the woman could be «happy» as it met her nature and her needs, with the technical aids possible, the comforts of modern building materials, good colouring, lighting and ventilation, but above all through a floor plan which takes into account her wifely and maternal activities and centers them as spatially as possible and also gives her personal inclinations scope and stimulation.» A bad kitchen was after all the reason for mental health and relationship problems. (11)

A lot has changed since then and the kitchen reacted to changes and food production and shifts in society. One aspect is the realization that the kitchen space has altered from a place of production to one of consumption - «Wohnküche» , and that it is closely networked with the city. The use of fossil forms of energy produced new forms of households and new performative spaces. (12) The answer to the question «who cooks for whom?» is different today. With new feminist discourse also positioning oneself’s body in the kitchen became a political act as cooking and as the kitchen’s inherent link was connected to the outside. The beginning of the 2010s stated that cooking «was in decline» and it turned into a form of play from the act of work. (13) Women are not solely responsible anymore for preparing food as this is not a solely domestic task anymore. If the act of preparation moved out of your own kitchen and distanced from the female body (at least a bit), who is preparing your food now and under which conditions? Especially with the growing demand of delivery services since the global pandemic and it’s severe consequences on public life and its processes. Due to the pandemic the home and its kitchen become more central again, so the question has how the actions of the kitchens could be performed today.

(1) - Altherr, A., Die Küche in ihrem Heim, in: Bauen + Wohnen, Band 1-5 (1947-1949) Heft 2.
(2) - A New Discourse on the Kitchen Author(s): Holly A. Stovall, Lori Baker-Sperry and Judith M. Dallinger Source: Australian Journal of Environmental Education , July 2015, Vol. 31, No. 1, Special Issue: Putting Food on the Table (July 2015), pp. 110-131.
(3) - S.N., Die Küche, in: Wohnen 42 (1967) Heft 10.
(4) - S.N., Die moderne Küche im sozialen Wohnungsbau, in: Wohnen, Band (Jahr): 31 (1956), Heft 7.
(5) - S.N., Rund um die Küche, in: Wohnen 44 (1969) Heft 10.
(6) - S.N., Neues im Küchenbau, in: Wohnen 34 (1959) Heft 8.
(7) - S.N., Die Küche, in: Wohnen 42 (1967) Heft 10.
(8) - S.N., Die Küche ist kein Nebenraum, in: Wohnen, Band (Jahr): 40 (1965), Heft 10.
(9) - S.N., Neues im Küchenbau, in: Wohnen 34 (1959) Heft 8.
(10) - S.N., Rund um die Küche, in: Wohnen 44 (1969) Heft 10.
(11) - Bläsch, H. / Neuenschwander, E. / Zucker, Hellmut: Neue Gedanken zur Küchengestaltung, in: Bauen + Wohnen, 11 (1957) Heft 1.
(12) - Joachim Krausse, Reinhold Leinfelder and Julia von Mende, Anthropocene Kitchen, in: Nicolaj van der Meulen and Jörg Wiesel (editors), Culinary Turn. Aesthetic Practice of Cookery, Transcript Verlag, 2019.
(13) - Amy B. Trubek, Looking at Cooking, in: Anthropology Now , Vol. 4, No. 3 (December 2012), pp. 24-32.