In the years immediately following World War II, Cornell found itself the site of tremendous innovation and discovery in disciplines of home design and ergonomics. On April 16 in Mann Library, the 2014 Deans Fellow in the History of Home Economics, Barbara Penner, presented some of her work on the intertwined histories of two important research projects from the postwar era “The Cornell Kitchen” (1947-1953) and “The Bathroom” (1958-1965).

Penner

According to Penner, the Cornell Kitchen was “a landmark in terms of user-centered design.” The project was a collaboration between Cornell’s Center for Housing and Environmental Studies and the College of Home Economics – now known as the college of Human Ecology – but the schools of architecture, agriculture and engineering also offered meaningful support.

Penner’s interest in the collaborative project was inspired by Alexander Kira’s book “The Bathroom,” which she described as “one of the most bizarre and intriguing design books of the 20th century, but incredibly important.” The book, written in 1966, was based on research conducted between 1958 and 1965 at the Center for Housing and Environmental Studies under the name, “Criteria for design and planning of bathrooms, 1958-62.”

Penner outlined three “radical” design principles underlying Kira’s research methods: a consideration of psychological user needs as well as physical needs, the importance of multidisciplinary teams, and an emphasis on crafting spaces that catered to the widest possible range of users of different ages and abilities.

“[Kira’s] designs were profoundly user-centered, flexible and easily customized,” she remarked. This was especially intriguing for Penner, because Kira’s approach contrasted with the era’s mainstream tendency toward standardization and uniformity.

“It became clear to me that [Kira] had a very particular and well developed set of methods. I thought, ‘where on Earth did he get these research methods?’ He seemed to be following a well-established path,” Penner explained.

This inquiry led her to venture into Kira’s background, especially his time as a student of architecture at Cornell during the 1950s and as a professor in the school beginning in 1957.

“What influenced him, and would really serve as the model or template for “The Bathroom,” was the Cornell Kitchen project,” she said.

The Cornell Kitchen emerged out of a larger, five-year project run by the USDA Bureau of Human Nutrition and Home Economics involving agricultural experiment stations in seven states, including New York. The purpose was to obtain and analyze data to establish housing requirements and home improvement practices for rural living. The project was masterminded by Cornell professor Glenn H. Beyer, former director of the Center for Housing and Environmental Studies.

The kitchen’s designs were guided by several principles: ease of planning and installation, reduction of fatigue and stress, and enhanced convenience. Key to the kitchen’s design was its division into five work centers: the oven-refrigerator, the mixing station, the cooking range, the sink and the serving station.

The designers also were concerned about the aesthetics of the kitchen. “They wanted it to be attractive; they wanted people to be drawn to the Cornell Kitchen,” Penner said.

Over the course of the project’s development, tensions flared between Cornell and some of its collaborating partners over the school’s dominance of the venture and the commercial agenda pursued by the Center for Housing and Environmental Studies, who wished to see the Cornell Kitchen manufactured and available for purchase.

The Cornell Kitchen was covered by major newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and produced a set of widely requested literature specifically detailing the project. For Penner, this showed that the kitchen was being taken seriously by the public as something more than just a novelty.

For Penner, “The Bathroom” and “The Cornell Kitchen” characterize an influential movement of the postwar years that underscored efforts at solving spatial and environmental issues through multidisciplinary approaches.

Robert Johnson ’17 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.