Date of Graduation

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Interior Design

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Interior Design

Advisor/Mentor

Herman, Greg

Committee Member

Sharpless, Charles

Second Committee Member

Furlong, Kimberly

Abstract

The Sears Roebuck & Co mail order home was no exception to the idea that architecture and design are products of culture and society. Penny Sparke, a scholar of domestic interiors, writes that design is informed by “economics, politics, technology, culture, society, our psychological make-up, ethics, and the world’s ecological systems” (Sparke 8). In 1908, Sears responded to an increase in demand for single-family housing by releasing a home that could be delivered right to your door. This study investigates the ways in which gender inequality, particularly, the confinement of women to domestic space and housekeeping labor, manifests itself in architecture and design. This study analyzes floor plans, diagrams kitchen work triangles, and explores workflow to understand the intentions and solutions of the Sears kit home kitchen design more explicitly. Other reasons for specific design solutions were also taken into account when researching this topic. The postwar housing market, demands of single families, and the cultural climate could have also contributed to decisions made in the design of these homes. This research combines all of these ideas to answer the question of whether the Sears kit home kitchen influenced and prolonged ideas of gender inequality by isolating the woman of the home to a space that neither served its user nor advanced the cause of progressive womanhood.

Keywords

Sears Kit Home; Sears Catalog of Homes; Kit Houses; Kitchen Design; Feminist Critique of Kitchens; Domestic Single Family Housing

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