Fitted kitchen – Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky 08.01.2021 Austria’s first female architect
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky designed the revolutionary “Frankfurt kitchen”. Austrian Post is celebrating the great Austrian architect with a special stamp in the series “Austrian inventions”.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) was born into a middle-class Viennese family. She studied architecture at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, now the University of Applied Arts, and later collaborated with masters like Adolf Loos. From 1926 on she worked in Frankfurt, developing the prototype for modern fitted kitchens with her compact “Frankfurt kitchen”. The focus was on rational design and minimising distances when working in the kitchen – the aim was to streamline housework for the women of the time, who often also worked, while keeping the kitchen affordable.
In many respects Schütte-Lihotzky led an eventful life. Among other things, she designed houses for the Viennese Settlement Movement, and she planned “socialist towns” in the Soviet Union and schools in Turkey. As a member of the Communist Party and the Resistance, she was imprisoned by the Gestapo in 1941. After the war she continued to work as an architect, designing several community buildings and kindergartens in Vienna, among other things. She travelled a great deal, published her work and organised exhibitions. She died in Vienna just before her 103rd birthday. Nowadays Schütte-Lihotzky is regarded as an icon and pioneer for women in architecture.