A bit late

Kitchen Godjets

Bad form to apologize for not posting. But it is the lightest news week of the year! All this coverage of Barack Obama’s office! The psychologists-cum-decorators in the NYT Home section “analysis” of the new rug are creeping me out. And Dominique Browning says what I would have said, had I been asked:

Dominique Browning

Former editor in chief, House & Garden.

All those earth tones. Brown upon rust upon ochre upon …drab. We’re dangerously close to Harvest Gold here, folks. This office does not inspire confidence. The presidential team is clearly trying to project a laidback, we-don’t-do-decorating image — and why? Design matters. We judge books — and presidents — by their covers, at least at first glance. Obama’s office looks small and subdued; it could be the TV room in anyone’s house. The Bush version could have used tweaking; it is a tad on the fussy, nouveau-suburban side, but at least it is light, airy and elegant, as befits the office. And those blue stripes on the side chairs have panache. The Bush carpet — and each President commissions his own — wins hands down; those radiating stripes are wonderfully bold.

So let me call your attention to something more interesting in the same section. I wrote about the evolution of kitchen design here (many revealing descriptions of kitchens past in the comments) and mentioned the upcoming MoMA exhibit Counter Space. Here’s an interview with the dynamic curator Juliet Kinchin, talking about the role of women in making the American kitchen, and how space stresses us out.

Since then, the kitchen seems to have gone from a modular, efficient place to one customized to various tastes, outfitted with computers, TVs and nonergonomic tools like Philippe Starck’s lemon juicer.

Reyner Banham, the critic, called things like that “symbols of affluent futility.” After World War II, it wasn’t just about the abundance of food, it was about the proliferation of these symbols. You’re selling appliances by dancing. Banham also called them “household godjets.” It’s the leisure kitchen.

And:

Some people hate to cook.

It’s called mageirocophobia, the fear of cooking. That’s the downside of bringing the kitchen into the middle of the home — you’re being judged not just by your family, but by not feeding the family well enough.

NYT Opinionator: What’s Cooking in Kitchen Design?

Second of my three installments for the New York Times Living Rooms series, this one on kitchens: What’s Cooking in Kitchen Design?

So how did we go from efficiency to entertainment? In “Mad Men,” Betty Draper has wall ovens and a stove-top island, both desirable today; the differences are the brown plaid wallpaper and cabinets made from dowdy knotted pine. In other words, what felt like a battle in the 1920s was, by the mid-1960s, a victory. The emphasis on time-saving consumer technology, born in the Frankfurt Kitchen and fueled by the postwar domestic revolution in the United States, brought us the microwave, the fridge-freezer combo, the automatic coffee maker and a thousand other gadgets; with those in place, we could relax. The barrier between the workplace of the kitchen and the social space of the living room broke down; we could invite the rest of the family in.

My favorite discovery during my research for the piece was the Hoosier cabinet, pictured above, a turn-of-the-century labor-saving device that put all ingredients and utensils within the cook’s reach. Many examples even had rule-of-thumb recipe charts developed by “home engineer” Christine Frederick pasted inside the cupboard doors. (For a great visual history of the American kitchen, buy America’s Kitchens published by Historic New England.)

My original inspiration for this essay was the upcoming MoMA exhibition Counter Space: Design on the Modern Kitchen, which opens September 15 on the museum’s second floor (always exciting when design breaks out of its third-floor ghetto). I interviewed curator Juliet Kinchin for the story, and the exhibit sounds amazing, starting with the installation of a real Frankfurt Kitchen (1926-1927), one of thousands installed in German social housing in the 1920s and 1930s.

Designed by Margarete Schutte-Lihotsky, the kitchen is (appropriately? ironically?) the earliest work by a woman architect in the museum’s collection, as well as one of the most influential. What first struck me about it—shallow, I know— was its color palette, which looks so current and so Remodelista. And those bins! I need those, and so do you.

On a personal note, since this was cut from the story: I grew up with the dread avocado fridge. Not my mother’s choice, what our house in Cambridge came with. Funny thing is, by next year, I think they are not going to be a joke anymore.

Finally, so my blog doesn’t become all D/R, all the time, just a link to Pentagram’s new post on my book Design Research, which shows inside spreads and talks about how the design and writing team worked together.

And another link to Architizer’s excellent summary, From D/R to IKEA.