Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and the Architecture of Collective Dissidence, 1918–1989

S.E. Eisterer’s book opens many doors to the rich lives of Schütte-Lihotsky and offers a brilliant reflection on the craft of architectural history. The generous and often surprising iconography and writing move us through affects, movements, techniques, artefacts, spaces and kinships–including non-monogamy–exceeding nationalist and heteronormative disciplinary and archival frameworks. Traversing twentieth-century communism and anti-fascism informed by queer theory, the book shows how this much-needed enmeshment uncovers histories of modern architecture and anti-fascist techniques vital for the present. Echoing Schütte-Lihotsky’s own unsung position, Eisterer reminds us that the labor of collective dissidence is not solely about production but also about rest, grief, enjoyment, relationships, and dreams, and that their remainders and histories are inextricably entangled with their practice. - Janus Jacynthe Lafontaine Carboni

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

Moving beyond the 1920s, when the well-known “Frankfurt Kitchen” was first proposed, S.E. Eisterer’s exhaustive new study of the feminist planner and artist Grete Schütte-Lihotzky leads readers across many decades of political and artistic activism to offer an invaluable new perspective on its subject, brimming with newly published images and texts. Focusing on the practice of “collective dissidence” as expressed through a rich array of media and spatial interventions, this book establishes a new benchmark for the study of its subject and her contributions to the architecture and politics of the 20th century. - Alice Friedmann, Wellesley College

S.E. Eisterer has written a marvel of a book about the marvelous architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, matching her subject's fiercely lived life with her own impassioned, deeply informed prose. Eisterer combines first-hand accounts and participants' memories of Schütte-Lihotzky's heroic resistances to Nazism and other forms of oppressions with a scholar's eye for architecture, politics, and history. Eisterer rightly insists that Schütte-Lihotzky's ambitions and dissidence transcend the individual. It was always about the collective. Now more than ever, Schütte-Lihotzky's life, achievements, struggles, and collectivism across the twentieth century can inspire new generations, energized by Eisterer's inspired book. - Daniel M. Abramson, Boston University