Conference on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Frankfurt Kitchen
November 20–21, 2026
Developed in 1926 by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000), the Frankfurt Kitchen is today firmly inscribed in the canon of architectural and design history. Its centennial provides an occasion to subject the kitchen—both as an architectural and design-historical model and as a political, social, and economic space—to renewed inquiry.
As a site of the ambivalent entanglement of architectural innovation and the gendered division of labor, it serves as the point of departure for a critical interrogation of topology: In what ways do kitchens structure social relations and reproductive labor within capitalist economies? What is the emancipatory potential of architectural design in this context?
The University of Applied Arts Vienna addresses these questions from the vantage point of the Frankfurt Kitchen’s position in twentieth-century architectural history, conceiving it as a nexus of transnational discourses on the relations on labor, gender, economy, technology, and social reproduction. It situates Schütte-Lihotzky’s kitchen designs in relation to contemporaneous and later positions, and spans a trajectory from alternative models of community-building to a critical engagement with the musealization of the Frankfurt Kitchen and other iconic designs of international modernism, to the logics of the kitchen as a design object between status symbol and serialization.
The papers and discussions will be held in German and English. Translation tools will be available on site. The conference will be recorded.
Welcome remarks by: Judith Augustinovič, Martina Griesser-Stermscheg and Cosima Rainer.
With contributions by: Renate Allmayer-Beck, Bettina Buchendorfer, Eva Engelbert, Ljubica Jakšić, Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, Ruth Hanisch, Waltraud P. Indrist, Juliet Kinchin, Stefanie Kitzberger, Mary McLeod, Mara Sánchez Llorens, Christine Oertel, Monika Platzer, Brigitte Podgorschek PRINZpod, Anna Puigjaner, Bernadette Reinhold, Barbara Reisinger, Christina Schraml, Anna Stuhlpfarrer, Roswitha Väth, Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah, Jenni Tischer, and Christine Zwingl.
Keynote: Mary McLeod, Columbia GSAPP.
Developed by Stefanie Kitzberger and Bernadette Reinhold (Collection and Archive, University of Applied Arts Vienna) in cooperation with Judith Augustinovič, Christine Oertel, and Christine Zwingl (Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Center, Vienna).
