Without doubt, the “Frankfurt Kitchen” was Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s most pioneering work — today you can even find an example in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Measuring just 1.9 by 3.4 meters, it was the world’s first fitted kitchen, known for its blue-green cabinets, compact workspace, and affordable price. Designed to make the most of the limited room available in the workers’ apartments of the 1920s, it was so efficient in its layout that the time taken to move between tasks could be measured with a stopwatch.

Yet Schütte-Lihotzky had no desire to be known as an interior designer. In old age, when people only described her as the designer of the Frankfurt Kitchen, she would insist, “I am not a kitchen.” In truth, the Austrian architect gave the world much more over her 103 years — in particular, thanks to her socialist politics. Upon her birth in 1897, in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, women’s role was often defined as kinder, küche, kirche — children, kitchen, church. Yet Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s life followed a quite different course — better defined in terms of career, kitchen, and communism.