The publicity photo of Julia Child making Poulet Sauté Marengo captures everything that made her a runaway star. She seems at once powerful and naughty, a woman who always shares in the joke. She wields the sword and holds the chicken firmly, with strong arms and a conspiratorial smile.

Child’s presence is so dominant, it is hard to look beyond her. But once we do, details of the set come into focus. At the counter, an array of ingredients and saucepans stand at the ready. On a tiled back wall, we see two waist-high ovens and some of her famed batterie de cuisine. A painting by her husband, Paul, hangs above a vase of flowers.

The kitchen was Julia Child’s workplace. It was also a stage, where her show, The French Chef, was recorded. A weekly half-hour program, piloted in 1962 on Boston’s WGBH-TV and then eagerly picked up by an expanding pool of affiliates, the show was the first bona fide hit for the nascent National Education Television network. By 1966, it was being broadcast in 106 cities across the United States. Its star, unknown at the start of the decade, appeared on the cover of Time and received an Emmy. In 1973, The French Chef ended with over 200 programs under its apron.

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Yet there is another story to tell about Child’s influence on design, one less about the products she made desirable and more about how her ethos shaped the environments in which she worked. Her kitchens were distinctive but not glamorous or miraculous. Reflecting principles and skills Julia and Paul Child had developed in earlier careers, these were highly rational spaces, rigorously designed by the couple to support the varied activities and lives that played out there. Style was subservient to flexible functionality. It was this quality that would be picked up, starting in the late 1970s, by a group of designers who put forward a design philosophy emphasising user-centeredness and accessibility.