Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989
S.E. Eisterer (Author),
The extraordinary, century-spanning life and career of pioneering architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) is widely recognized as one of the most significant women architects in the history of modern design, yet her lifelong work as an activist and dissident remains largely overlooked. Rather than offering a conventional biography, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989 recasts her career through the lenses of resistance and memory studies, using her life story as a prism through which to examine the international networks of artists, politicians, and workers with whom she collaborated. The book reveals how class, gender, migration, religion, and anti-fascist organizing shaped Schütte-Lihotzky’s social and architectural commitments and how dissident collectives were strengthened, or at times fractured, through political work. Moving from the architectural imaginaries of the interwar period through resistance to fascism and postwar cultures of remembering and forgetting, the book illuminates an alternative history of modern architecture grounded in collective imagination, political struggle, and resistance to erasure.
This book’s great achievement is to give weight to emotional bonds of love, friendship and family in architecture, alongside professional and political allegiances. In so doing, it expands how architectural history understands practice and validates material acts beyond building. It offers new perspectives on female dissident architects whose work was often small-scale or collective, and whose careers were interrupted, dispersed and, finally, remade by experiences of exile and resistance. - Barbara Penner, University College London
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989" about?
The extraordinary, century-spanning life and career of pioneering architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) is widely recognized as one of the most significant women architects in the history of modern design, yet her lifelong work as an activist and dissident remains largely overlooked. Rather than offering a conventional biography, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989 recasts her career through the lenses of resistance and memory studies, using her life story as a prism through which to examine the international networks of artists, politicians, and workers with whom she collaborated. The book reveals how class, gender, migration, religion, and anti-fascist organizing shaped Schütte-Lihotzky’s social and architectural commitments and how dissident collectives were strengthened, or at times fractured, through political work. Moving from the architectural imaginaries of the interwar period through resistance to fascism and postwar cultures of remembering and forgetting, the book illuminates an alternative history of modern architecture grounded in collective imagination, political struggle, and resistance to erasure.
Who wrote "Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989"?
"Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989" was written by S.E. Eisterer.
S.E. Eisterer is Assistant Professor in Architectural History at Princeton University and the Director of Research at the Princeton-Mellon Initiative on Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. She is the co-founder of queer space working group and the Insurgent Domesticities group.
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