The Frankfurt Kitchen Changed How We Cook—and Live

We often think of apartment kitchens as problems to be solved. They’re likely to be short on counter space, storage, and light, or they’re stubbornly out of step with trends in interior design. As renters, we may try to spruce them up with extra shelves and unusual drawer pulls.

Dream kitchens, by contrast, are the light-filled, airy, marble-clad workspaces where movie characters sip tea before an open laptop. They’re situated well outside the city limits, inside large houses on landscaped grounds. The ideal view over the horizon of the kitchen sink is a tall hydrangea shrub, not a brick wall. The ideal American kitchen has long had an implicit pro-suburban bias, positing city kitchens as the domain of the young, single, and struggling.