Kitchen design in houses, its transition and its evaluation out of Frankfurt kitchen

Kitchen, where we prepare and cook our food which is one of our most basic humanely need, is one of the places we primarily need in the process of our lives in this respect. With the cultural and sociological changes during history, the kitchen and its place, dimensions and importance in the house have changed and transformed. Particularly, mass production which appeared after industrialization has affected the design and, depending on this, human life. With differentiating social configuration and the involvement of women as an individual to the process of manufacturing, the kitchen space, its relation with women and the time spent there has changed; the scenario written for the kitchen in the house has been innovated. This study intends to explicate the evolution of the kitchen space in the historical process, and is based on the kitchen sampler, which was devised by Austrian architect Margarethe Schütte Lihotzky in 1926 with minimum dimensions aiming to shorten the cooking time and by this way help woman have more time for her career, family and herself and minimising the cost of producing equipped kitchen, and known as "Frankfurt Kitchen". The thesis consists of five sections. The aim of the thesis, the method of research and the findings are in the first section. In the second section named as "The Reflections of Kitchen Culture on the Space", the ethimological origin of the word kitchen in different languages, the development of cooking and food culture, along with the emergence of the cooker in different settlements are discussed in the sense of material and typological differences. The development process of the house kitchen from the first settlements until industrial revolution, the antiguity and middle ages, is also viewed in this section. In the third part of the thesis, new notions developed with industrial revolution, the newly molded image of women and "the new kitchen" dealt again with the popular plots of the era in the context that house is the space where the most production is made is being analysed. How kitchen is evaluated by the research and publications during the scientization of housework, particularly the training of housewife on how to do housework correctly during this process and the publications and campaigns supporting this is tried to be explicated. The kitchen samples developed similar to the Frankfurt Kitchen, the main subject of this thesis, and devised to belong to a mobile or modular furniture or a space are studied. The fourth section concentrates on the Frankfurt Kitchen, presented to be the anchestor of the modern kitchen in many sources and its designer. Margarete Schütte Lihotzky, who lived in Turkey for some time, is targeted to be introduced to the reader in respect to her education, the works she became a part of, her worldview and the importance she gave to the spaces and education of women – children both ocupationally and extraprofessionally. Moreover, the Frankfurt Kitchen, which is discussed with the project it is involved, its design story, introductory activities, its sub-elements, materials used and its functional details, is detailly defined with illustrations and photos. In the fifth and conclusion section of this thesis the space analysis of the Frankfurt Kitchen has been made and the conceptions taken into consideration during the designing process are evaluated. Under the light of all these research, the positive values of Frankfurt Kitchen, which is seen as the milestone of new kitchen, dealt with as early as 1926 but cannot be presented to the user even in most kitchens of today are determined. Furthermore, the deficient parts of the design under the influence of technological developments and the disadvantages of the design are assessed. The presentation of values which will take us forward in kitchen design is targeted in this research.