Bathroom, the Kitchen, and the Aesthetics of Waste

Between 1890 and 1940, America's culture of consumption took its modern form: products were mass-produced, mass-distributed, and designed to be rapidly replaced by the buying public. The same period also saw the rise of the modern bathroom and kitchen as newly equipped spaces for administering bodily care The streamlined style of modern design, which served the new ideals of hygiene and the manufacturing policy of planned obsolescence, emanated from the domestic landscape of the bathroom and kitchen. The Bathroom, the Kitchen analyzes these developments with text and historical photographs, drawings, sketches, advertisements, and catalog pages.