Systematic household. The Standardised Kitchen Project

The interdisciplinary Standardised Kitchen Project is exemplary of the 1970s in the Hungarian People’s Republic. After the Soviet Union’s repression of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the retaliations that followed, the newly installed Kádár dictatorship set upon the formation of a more permissive regime, with the Hungarian standard of living improving at a slow tempo.

The organizers of the Standardised Kitchen Project—1972 initiated by Mihály Pohárnok (b. 1939)—wanted to make the kitchens of prefabricated housing units more liveable by comprehensively reforming the built-in furnishings, appliances, and kitchen objects. The developmental process involved representatives from industry and commerce. It was not the fault of the designers that their undertaking ultimately fell through, ascending to the level of a utopian dream for posterity.