MUNICH.- Just short of a century lies between the first fitted kitchen and the personally configured kitchen of today. In the course of that long period, designers and architects developed countless new solutions and responded to changes in technology and society.

The spectrum ranges from the simple cooking niche to the kitchen as the communicative heart of the home. It starts with the Frankfurt Kitchen (1926) by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. The first so-called fitted kitchen developed for around 10,000 apartments was intended to make the household as efficient as possible for women.

Prominent examples from the post-War period show how important the kitchen was in Functionalist architecture: The kitchen unit for the Unité d'habitation residential tower block in Marseille (1946-1952) by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand and André Wogenscky with around 330 apartments or the kitchen designed by Arne Jacobsen for a detached house of the 1957 International Building Exhibition in Berlin as a central space of the bungalow.

The serial kitchen moduls Eschebach K 21created by VEB Küchenmöbel Radeberg (1956) was highly successful thanks to its array of different uses and color spectrum in East Germany and the Soviet Union.

Stefan Wewerka's Kitchen Tree (1984) and the Coffee Tree (1984) by the Kunstflug group represent new or ironic approaches. The example of the workbench (1984) by Herbert H. Schultes takes up the idea of the modern cooking island, which finds its latest expression in the kitchen Erlkönig masterminded by J-Gast (2020/2021).

The look at kitchen culture is complemented by a selection of household appliances that characterize everyday life in the kitchen. A wall installation of around 300 trays from the Ludmila and Rolf Podlasly collection shows popular design from GDR production.

The aspect of kitchen work and the traditional role of women will be expanded with works by Rosemarie Trockel, Laurie Simmons and Mona Hatoum, all loans from the Sammlung Goetz, Munich.

The exhibition architecture designed by the design office OHA (Office Heinzelmann Ayadi), Munich, consciously takes particle board as its basic material: Almost all industrially manufactured fitted kitchens are made of it today. Overall, the show offers insights into and outlooks for the world of designed kitchens.

The exhibition is on view at Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum.