The Rational Kitchen in the Interwar Period in Belgium: Discourses and Realities

Modernist architects introduced the rational kitchen to Belgium from 1930 onwards. The influence of the CIAM (Congrés Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne/International Congresses of Modern Architecture) discourse on the rational minimum dwelling was clearly visible, in architects' journals as well as in women's magazines. The most important Belgian contribution to the further development of the rational kitchen was the CUBEX kitchen, a design by Louis-Herman De Koninck of standardized cupboard items that could be combined in different ways. This system was to become a huge commercial success, and has been installed in thousands of Belgian kitchens, before as well as after the Second World War. The reception of the architects' discourse on the rational kitchen, however, was different among the different social strata. Whereas bourgeois and middle-class women in general applauded the new ideas about kitchen design and the appliances that went with it, the climate among rural and working-class women was far less receptive. Magazines aimed at these strata of women almost ignored the matter, or confined themselves to a few offhand suggestions as to the facilitation of household tasks by special techniques or tools. Consistently, the workmen's housing built between 1925 and 1940 did not apply the rational kitchen, the argument being that a limited budget did not allow for it. New housing for the middle classes and the bourgeois apartments, on the other hand, were the contexts where rational kitchens were most successfully applied.