Early Kitchen Studies

In the first half of the 20^th century there was a lot of interest in work place efficiency, and a  lot of research went into making factories and workplaces safer and more ergonomic. This research extended into the home in the evolving area of home economics. Universities and companies funded research on tools and systems to bring the ideas that were being brought into factories, into the home.

We have mentioned here before the work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. The couple worked as “efficiency engineers” and worked together to help companies find more efficient and less fatiguing ways of working. When Frank died unexpectedly, Lillian, who had a PhD in Psychology, was left to try and ply her trade in this deciedidly men’s world. She turned to the evolving area of “home economics”. Though not much of a cook herself, she found she was able to bring the ideas of “motion minded” work into the home, and most importantly to us into the kitchen.

Lillian Gilbreth's experimental kitchen designed for the Brooklyn Borough
Gas Co 1930. The 6" squares on the floor make a conveniant grid for charting
travel paths during work sequences. Above the refrigerator is a flow chart
showing travel paths for given tasks. The long narrow list just to the left is a process
chart, which lists the movements and "therbligs" that constitute each task. The
drawing above the stove is captioned, "Circular Routing of Work"

 In the 1920’s she was hired by the Brooklyn Gas Company to design an ergonomic kitchen. Product placement was probably a big part of this study because gas and electric companies were in pitched battles to sell their appliances. As part of a trade show, she was hired to set up her “kitchen practical”.  In this mock up many of the ideas that are a part of modern kitchen design were illustrated. Appliance and counter space layout, the infamous “triangle”, different counter heights for different tasks, and the grouping of kitchen tools to make a particular kitchen task easier, like a baking center, or clean up center.

Another interesting study was the Cornell kitchen, subtitled: “product design through research”.  This happened later, in the 1950s and used many of the ideas from the Gilbreths’ earlier work on layout and “work centers”. The study also focused on the sociological aspects of kitchen layout, and how this workplace, the kitchen, was increasingly becoming the social center of the house, as Lillian had predicted.

There were a lot of interesting aspects to this study, but to me the main focus was cabinet and counter materials and cabinet construction.  They espoused the idea of modular cabinet construction; boxes that could come apart and be reconfigured for different layouts, all while keeping the ideas of good kitchen layout in mind. There were lots of drawers and pullouts in the base cabinets; not a lot of uppers crowding the work areas; and motion minded work centers. This was the beginning of the modular kitchen cabinet design that has been wholeheartedly adopted by companies like Ikea.

The odd thing about all this research was how little of it was adopted by American cabinet manufacturers and kitchen designers. Most of the kitchens we tear out of houses are not that old, but are also not that nice and seem to have been built and installed without any knowledge of the research of the last century. Too many doors, crowding appliances without adequate counter space in the right areas, and of course little consideration of work areas.

This makes me think of the hackneyed quote “Those without knowledge of the past are doomed to repeat it”.