10 years, 100 female architects. 10 architect studios led by women [X]
08/03/2023.
International Women's Day 2023
metalocus, ANA SAIZ
metalocus, ANA SAIZ
On the occasion of International Women's Day, from METALOCUS we have chosen ten architects with great careers and with relevant projects that are sometimes not sufficiently known. This is already the tenth edition of this series of articles, with a total of 100 published architects, making their work visible in a context in which it is sometimes necessary to continue breaking too many glass ceilings.
In this 2023 edition, we have several female architects who carried out their activity during the 20th century with the aim of recovering their legacy, sometimes forgotten and, in others, eclipsed by their peers. The group is also joined by very young architects who have already begun to practice in the 21st century.
In this 2023 edition, we have several female architects who carried out their activity during the 20th century with the aim of recovering their legacy, sometimes forgotten and, in others, eclipsed by their peers. The group is also joined by very young architects who have already begun to practice in the 21st century.
Paris Region Headquarters by Ferrier Marchetti Studio. Photograph by Luc Boegly.
CO’Met - Arena, congress and convention centre by Ferrier Marchetti Studio. Photograph by Luc Boegly.
T20 in Xujiahui by Jacques Ferrier Architecture and Sensual City Studio. Photograph by Luc Boegly.
82 dwellings in Carabanchel by Amann-Cánovas-Maruri. Photography by David Frutos.
Spanish Pavilion for Expo Dubai 2020.. Photography by Luis Asín.
Housing buildings in Kiem, Luxembourg, by Amann, Cánovas, Maruri + Adelino Magalhaes. Photograph by Miguel Fernández Galiano.
Atelier Singer-Dicker: Hall and staircase. Design for the Reconstruction of the August and Hilda Heriot House, with sculpture "Anna Selbdritt" - Axonometric Plan,Pencil, color pencil, tempera on cardboard 50,5 x 47,5. Vienna, 1932.
Tennis club in Vienna in 1928. Design by Dicker-Singer.
Guest Pavilion of Countess Heriot. Design by Dicker-Singer.
Design and extension for the upholstery shop Teppich-Schlüter (1950), by Wera Meyer-Waldeck.
International exhibition of Brussels in which Wera Meyer-Waldeck participates, section IV, 1958.
Integrated kitchen in the living room. Pilot housing for the exhibition "Die Stadt von morgen" by Wera Meyer-Waldeck.
"A very tiny palazzo" by Fala Atelier. Photograph by Ivo Tavares.
Rua do Paraiso dwellings by fala atelier. Photograph by Ricardo Loureiro.
Suspended house by Fala Atelier. Photograph by Ivo Tavares Studio.
Canberra plan submitted to the Canberra design competition by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion M. Griffin “View from the summit of Mount Ainslie”. National Archives of Australia.
Design for suburban residence by Marion M. Griffin. National Archives of Australia.
David M. Amberg House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1910 by Frank Lloyd Wright and Marion Mahony Griffin in the Oak Park studio. Photograph by Jaydec, September 11, 2009.
Ivry-sur-Seine Social Housing Project, by Jean Renaudie, Renée Gailhoustet, 1969. Photograph by Lorenzo Zandri.
Aerial view of the Jeanne Hachette complex. Image courtesy of Ivry Archive.
Auberviliers by Renée Gailhoustet. Photograph by Marc Pataut (2022)
Lao Ding Feng Beijing ac by Neri&Hu. Photograph by Zhu Rhunzi.
Suzhou Chapel by Neri & Hu. Photograph © Pedro Pegenaute.
The Relic Shelter - Fuzhou Teahouse by Neri&Hu Design and Research Office. Photograph by Hao Chen.
Minnette de Silva (2nd from left) at the World Congress of Intellectuals for the Defense of Peace in Breslau in 1948, on her left Pablo Picasso, on her right Jo Davidson, on the far right Mulk Raj Anand.
Cultural Centre in Kandy by Minnette de Silva. Photograph by JanManu, February 16, 2022
Cultural Centre in Kandy by Minnette de Silva. Photograph by JanManu, February 16, 2022
Law Court in Balaguer by Arquitecturia. Photograph © Pegenaute.
Museum of Energy by Arquitecturia. Photography © Pedro Pegenaute.
Primary Care Center by Josep Camps and Olga Felip. Photography © Pedro Pegenaute.
We firmly believe that we should emphasize the work of women in architecture and for this reason, we have selected ten important architecture firms to continue the series that we started ten years ago.
These are the architects and studios selected this year.- Pauline Marchetti - Sensual City Studio, and Ferrier Marchetti. Atxu Amann - Temperaturas extremas. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Wera Meyer-Waldeck. Ana Luisa Soares - fala. Marion L. Mahony Griffin. Renée Gailhoustette. Rossana Hu - Neri&Hu. Minette de Silva. Olga Felip - Arquitecturia.
These are the architects and studios selected this year.- Pauline Marchetti - Sensual City Studio, and Ferrier Marchetti. Atxu Amann - Temperaturas extremas. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Wera Meyer-Waldeck. Ana Luisa Soares - fala. Marion L. Mahony Griffin. Renée Gailhoustette. Rossana Hu - Neri&Hu. Minette de Silva. Olga Felip - Arquitecturia.
- Pauline Marchetti Sensual City Studio, Ferrier Marchetti
Pauline Marchetti is an architect, founding partner of the Ferrier Marchetti studio and professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 2019 she won the 40Under40 award, from the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
She develops a sensitive and humanistic approach to architecture and the city, which combines sustainable development and new technologies, in the search for innovation and urban delight. She proposes to design and research methods that are based on the sensory dimension of space: volume, materiality, light, and environment.
Her studio combines research and practice, exploring a new urban condition, finding and developing opportunities for cities to contribute to the ecological balance of the planet and create a positive relationship between climate and design. Her architecture is not just about designing objects, but about the opportunities that design offers to create positive and meaningful relationships between buildings and people, contributing to a more holistic, sustainable and sensual world.
In 2008 she began his collaboration with Jaques Ferrier, thus forming the Ferrier Marchetti studio, which in 2010 presented its Sensual City research laboratory, thus combining architecture, rehearsals and studies. Their work has been selected for several international exhibitions and they have given numerous conferences in prestigious places.
- Atxu Amann Temperaturas extremas
Atxu Amann practices architecture from the Temperaturas Extremas studio and teaches in the Department of Architectural Graphic Ideation of the Madrid School of Architecture. In both facets she has received recognition for the innovative nature of her work.
She herself declared that all her activities throughout her life trajectory of continuous learning, training and strangeness, are linked to actions of ideologically positioned social content and aimed at the fight for a more dignified and just world in general, and in thecase of women and historically disadvantaged groups in particular.
Since 2006 she has been a Doctor of Architecture with the thesis "Domestic space: Women and the house", where, according to her own words, she tries to establish the links between ways of thinking, seeing the world, ways of life and housing, and in particular, to warn of the fundamental changes that the last century has brought about in the Western world: the information revolution, and above all, the women revolution.
In the housing projects of the studio that she founded together with Andrés Cánovas and Nicolás Maruri, conventional residential types are questioned to offer users the possibility of appropriating a space according to their real needs, seeking social sustainability. At the same time, she pays special attention to the spaces in between, filter spaces between the interior and the exterior and to the relationship among the neighbourhood.
In addition to residential buildings, many of them built after winning public competitions, they are also authors of well-known projects for cultural facilities in which they reject known solutions and opt for architecture as an instrument of thought and action from the project, even risk of attacking, modifying or transforming the works that precede them.
- Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898 - 1944) was a well-known Jewish artist, architect, and educator, killed in World War II. She was one of the most prominent women at the Bauhaus for various reasons. She is an exemplary Bauhaus student with a wide range of artistic profiles, she was the prototype of a multidisciplinary artist, of which this article can only point out a small part.
Hes connection with the Bauhaus began when she began her studies at the private school of Johannes Itten, in 1916, one of the main figures in the founding of the school created by Walter Gropius. When the Weimar Bauhaus was inaugurated in 1919, Friedl Dicker followed Johannes Itten. She studied there until 1923. In 1921 the Teachers' Council decided that she Dicker would be one of the 12 students who would be exempt from paying academic fees during the semester.
She did textile design, bookbinding and participated in typography workshops. She designed costumes and sets for important plays such as William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." She also designed four variants of an architectural plan, together with Franz Singer (1896-1954), who also belonged to the group of Itten's Viennese pupils, characterized by unconventional developments. Her works related to architecture were carried out in the studio formed with Franz Singer under the unofficial name of Atelier Singer-Dicker. Among the collaborators of the study were Martha Hauska-Döberl, Anna Szábo or Leopoldine Schrom.
The convulsive situation in the 1930s complicated the professional and affective relationship of the Singer and Dicker-Brandeis couple. Dicker-Brandeis was associated with the Communist Party and she would be jailed for forging passports for her colleagues. Following her release from prison, Dicker-Brandeis would increase her commitment by designing propaganda posters for the Communist Party. Her black and white photo collages criticized the living conditions of the working class, warned of the imminent Nazi threat and condemned the consequences of the crisis of capitalism as ways that facilitated totalitarianism.
Friedl Dicker would be deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, where she continued to teach children drawing. In October 1944 she tried to reunite with her husband, volunteering to make the trip to Auschwitz where she was murdered. Several suitcases would be left behind from this tremendous period with almost 5,000 children's drawings and collages, a reflection of her generosity and also of her enormous brilliance.
- Wera Meyer-Waldeck
Wera Meyer-Waldeck (1906 - 1964) was a German architect trained at the Bauhaus in Dessau, in whose projects she raised themes that are still valid today. After studying to be a teacher and later at the Dresden Academy of Graphic Arts, she enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1927 to do carpentry and finally in 1932 she graduated in Architecture. Wera was a student who constantly had two very clear concepts in mind: work and the need to learn: "being interested in everything, understanding everything I study, without ceasing to be critical".
During the following period, Meyer-Waldeck did not have an easy time practicing as an architect, like most of her colleagues. During the years of World War II, she worked in different organizations and companies. Unfortunately, at the end of the war, women were expelled from high-ranking jobs so that men could occupy them. After the war she had several jobs in different cities in Germany until in 1950 she settled in Bonn. Her activity was always intense, she made numerous educational tours and gave lectures. Her concerns and her commitment to architecture did not cease in the following years.
Among Meyer-Waldeck's works, the "pilot homes” stand out. She defended that the relationship between the different spaces in each home varies according to the type of family that is going to live in it. One of the topics to be discussed will be the relationship between the kitchen and the living room, integrating them creating the same space for both uses, so that the people who cooked (women) were not isolated while they did so. Another issue that she dealt with would be the unwanted loneliness of the elderly in her home. To solve it, she proposed a new way of living.
This new way of living integrated different generations within the same group. Wera created a group of patio-dwellings, where four different dwellings lived together around a patio. Each house was built for a different type of family, whether it was a standard family with children or a single person.
- Ana Luisa Soares fala
Ana Luisa Soares is a Portuguese architect graduated from the Faculty of Architecture University of Porto and the University of Tokyo. She worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Toyo Ito in Tokyo and is a visiting professor at the Bratislava faculty of architecture. Ana Luisa Soares is co-founder and partner of fala, a naive architecture studio based in Porto, together with Filipe Magalhães and Ahmed Belkhodja.
Fala focuses on the production of architecture on a residential scale and dreamlike competition proposals. The workshop optimistically works on a wide range of projects, from territories to bird houses. The projects are a mixture of formal languages, references, quotes and themes, without losing clarity; its architecture is intuitive but also eloquent. Her way of working is to start from a simple and innocent first idea and elaborate it so that it makes sense, giving rise to a coherent and complex result.
Since 2014, as part of fala, she has been giving lectures and classes all over the world. fala's work has also been widely published and has been exhibited at various events and institutions, such as the Portuguese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennale, and in a solo show at Casa da Cerca in Lisbon. Among other recognitions, fala was awarded the "Spotlight" prize by Rice University and selected as one of the 50 most relevant young offices in the world by DOMUS magazine in 2020.
- Marion L. Mahony Griffin
Marion Mahony Griffin (1871-1961) was an American architect, the second woman to graduate as an architect from MIT in 1894. Throughout her career, which spanned three continents during more than six decades, she worked as a draftsman at the Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park studio and collaborated with Walter Burley Griffin, whom she later married.
In 1895 he began working in Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park studio, and for 14 years he was one of the most important people there. So much that when Wright went to Japan in 1909, he offered her to take charge of the studio. She declined the proposal but took charge of finishing the work that had been started. In January 1898, Mahony passed the Illinois State Architects' Licensing Examination; she was probably the first woman in the United States to obtain a professional license.
She became known for her exquisite architectural rendering, to such an extent that the signature image in the early Wright studio drawings is the one she created. Her drawings were inspired by the style of Japanese art prints, both in composition and technique and the buildings were surrounded by abundant nature.
In 1911 she won, along with her partner and husband, the competition for the new capital of Australia, Canberra. After the result was announced, only one journalist recognized Mahony's co-authorship and influence on the project. They continued to work in Australia and then, for financial reasons, they accepted a large project in India, until her husband died suddenly. After this she returned to Chicago, where she wrote an (unpublished) biography and continued to lecture, design and write.
- Renée Gailhoustet
Renée Gailhoustet. We could not forget in this article French architect Renée Gailhoustet (1929 -2023), awarded the Royal Academy Architecture Prize last summer, sadly passed away earlier this year.
Committed to communism, she focused on a little-recognized issue at the time: social housing. At the age of 24, she joined the studio of Marcel Lods, where she met Jean Renaudie, with whom she would live for fifteen years, have two daughters, and work together on many projects. Common guidelines are found in their respective works: a staggered organization of the dwellings, particular attention to the duplex organization, a desire to eradicate the corridors to project the dwelling around a central room, a large space left to the green space in the form of deep terraces.
Gailhoustet devoted her entire career to developing better social housing in the suburbs of Paris, she designed numerous housing blocks, including her best-known work: the 10-story Le Liégat complex in Ivry-sur-Seine, where she lived. and installed her studio. and the La Maladrerie semi-detached apartment block in Aubervilliers. Instead of large complexes, she planned various types of buildings, separated by open spaces, creating new horizons for the city and its social housing developments.
One of the instantly recognizable features of Gailhoustet's projects is the stepped, planted terraces that allow nature to permeate domestic spaces in ways rarely seen in high-density housing. Through the use of innovative geometries and the mix of uses in her buildings, Gailhoustet created a compelling argument for blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior, collective and individual.
- Rossana Hu Neri&Hu
Rossana Hu is a founding partner of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an interdisciplinary international architectural design studio based in Shanghai. Founded in 2004, the studio handles projects ranging from master plans and architecture to interior design and graphic design. Based on research, Neri&Hu bases its style on the dynamic interplay of experience, detail, material, form and light rather than sticking to a ready-made one.
Through the practice of the profession, Hu has strengthened his view of architecture, which answers to a global worldview incorporating various overlapping design disciplines, while also strongly believing in research as a design tool, as each project has its unique set of contextual problems.
Alongside her design practice, Hu has been deeply committed to architectural education and has lectured across the globe at various universities and professional forums. Having recently finished teaching as a Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design following her last appointment in 2019, Hu began teaching as Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale School of Architecture in 2022 spring, where she received the distinguished Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor Chair in 2018. Rossana was appointed as Chair of the Department of Architecture at Tongji University in 2021.
Hu is also Founding Partner of Design Republic in Shanghai since 2004, a design platform incorporating retail concepts, design and cultural exhibitions, and education. In 2015, she was appointed as the Creative Director of Stellar Works and has served on the International Advisory Board of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra since 2018.
- Minnette de Silva
Minnette de Silva (1918 - 1998) was Sri Lanka's first female architect. A pioneer of Modern architecture in her country, she belonged to the young generation that participated in CIAM 6 in Bridgwater in 1947 and was the first Asian woman to be a member of the RIBA. However, the work and legacy of one of the most famous architects of her day have been forgotten, and both her studio and her house, as well as many of the buildings she built, are in a precarious state or ruined.
At CIAM she presented work by MARG, India's research group on modern architecture, whose objective was the exposure and discussion of the modern avant-garde seen in all fields as the appropriate language for a post-colonial society. They sought the synthesis of the modern with the colonial, understanding that modernity in the tropics could not be the same as in the West.
Her first work was the Karaunaratne house, an experiment in regional modern architecture. The split-level house combined modern construction and materials such as reinforced concrete and glass bricks with local craftsmanship and materials. Minnette De Silva would call this architecture trans-regionalist since she added movable panels of traditional Japanese architecture to the open plan to make the internal partitions, and it was surrounded by a gallery typical of local architecture, adapting the building to the climate and the social conditions, and blurring the line between the house and the garden.
From there, she began designing and building all types of buildings, from cabins to villas and entire apartment blocks. Her hallmark was to develop modern architecture in harmony with the landscape and traditional crafts.
From the early 1980s, when she retired from it, until the end of her life he worked on her memoirs, which were published shortly after her death Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect ( 1998). The book is a collage of experiences in which she reveals the difficulties or prejudices that she had to face: "exoticized" in London, Le Corbusier saw her as the personification of the romantic vision of India; for being a female architect in her country, within a very traditional and patriarchal society; for being a woman and not getting married, for being more aware of production than reproduction.
- Olga Felip Arquitecturia
Olga Felip Ordis (1980) is an architect born in Girona, Spain, and graduated from the Barcelona School of Architecture (2005), who during the last year of her degree did professional internships at the Carme Pinós studio. Felip is studying for a PhD at the Barcelona School of Architecture and is co-founder of the curatorial and design group MA!O and director of Architects for Architecture, an organization that promotes architecture as an instrument of progress.
Throughout her career she has received several awards, scholarships and recognitions, she was chosen Emerging Architect of the Year in 2013 and in 2015 she was awarded the Princess of Girona Arts and Letters Foundation Award, she has also obtained the Young Architect of the Year award 2010 for the LEAF Awards and 40under40 for The European Center of Architecture and The Chicago Athenaeum. In 2012 she was chosen to represent Catalonia at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Her architecture is characterized by successfully combining the creation of new forms with respect for the environment, as well as by her sober, elegant, warm and bright work, which achieves a harmonious effect on the user, the viewer and the landscape.
In 2009 she founded, together with Josep Camps, the Arquitecturia studio, it is an office dedicated to architecture, design and urban planning. They have worked on cultural, educational, health and residential projects, both in the public and private sectors. In addition to their work as a studio, they are also dedicated to university teaching, and research through doctoral studies and participate in the promotion and dissemination of culture as directors of associations of architects.
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Jacques Ferrier, Pauline Marchetti. Ferrier Marchetti Studio
Ferrier Marchetti Studio. Formerly operating as two separate entities, Jacques Ferrier Architecture and Sensual City Studio combined in 2019 to create an exciting new offer: Ferrier Marchetti Studio. Ferrier Marchetti Studio seeks to develop a sensitive, humanist approach to the city, combining sustainable development and new technologies in the quest for innovation and urban delight. The result is a preliminary analysis, procedure and stance which informs the architectural design process. The practice is innovative and idealistic in its approach to what architects can and should be capable of.
Ferrier Marchetti Studio believes that architecture should be a radical agent of change and reinvention. The studio has dedicated itself to producing innovative projects and concepts with a commitment to sustainable development as a backdrop. There are philosophical roots to this approach. The research ethos Sensual City was founded by Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti in 2010 as an open resource for collaboration with other thinkers and signals the practice’s intention to create an interdisciplinary momentum, a radical movement fit for the times we are living in.
‘What is needed now is nothing less than a new humanist revolution’
Ferrier Marchetti Studio is underpinned by this laboratory of ideas, creation and urban foresight, bringing together a network of professions from the worlds of art, architecture and urban planning, and social sciences. The practice’s work analyses changing trends in large modern cities to predict the effect that they will have on architecture and that which architecture should have on them.
Ferrier Marchetti Studio believes that architecture should be a radical agent of change and reinvention. The studio has dedicated itself to producing innovative projects and concepts with a commitment to sustainable development as a backdrop. There are philosophical roots to this approach. The research ethos Sensual City was founded by Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti in 2010 as an open resource for collaboration with other thinkers and signals the practice’s intention to create an interdisciplinary momentum, a radical movement fit for the times we are living in.
‘What is needed now is nothing less than a new humanist revolution’
Ferrier Marchetti Studio is underpinned by this laboratory of ideas, creation and urban foresight, bringing together a network of professions from the worlds of art, architecture and urban planning, and social sciences. The practice’s work analyses changing trends in large modern cities to predict the effect that they will have on architecture and that which architecture should have on them.
Estudio. AMANN CÁNOVAS MARURI
Amann, Cánovas, Maruri, architecture firm established by: Atxu Amann Alcocer, Andrés Cánovas Alcaraz and Nicolás Maruri Mendoza.
Atxu Amann Alcocer. Madrid 1961. Architect by the ETSA of Madrid. Doctorate from ETSAM with outstanding Cum Llaude, 2007. Urban Planning Technician from the Urban Studies Center of I.E.A.L. (M.A.P.) Scholar of the Technische Hoschule of Darmstadt (Germany) in CAAD. Director of the magazine Arquitectos. Director of the Postgraduate courses in Editorial Design for the European Social Fund. Professor in the postgraduate courses of Editorial Graphic Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Madrid. Professor of the Department of Architectural Graphic Ideation of ETSAM
Andrés Cánovas Alcaraz. Cartagena 1958. Architect by the School of Architecture of Madrid. Prometheus Scholarship at Tecniche Hoschule. Darmstatd. Germany. Director of the "Monographs of Architects" Collection. Director of the "Monographs of Buildings" Collection, Director of the "Crítica de Arquitectura" Collection, Director and editor of the magazine Arquitectos, 1987-2006, Professor of the CSDM of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University, European Design Institute, Coordinator of several postgraduate courses in Graphic Design Editorial in the Faculty of Fine Arts, the European Institute of Design and the European Social Fund. Faculty of Fine Arts, UCM, Professor of the Master of Aesthetics and Theory of Arts of the Autonomous University, Professor of Design Master of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Salamanca, Professor of the Master of Intervention in the Heritage of the ETSAM Professor of the Tourism Master of the UPC of Barcelona.
He has been secretary of the Final Project Project Tribunal at ESTAM. UPM. Deputy Director of the Spanish Architecture Biennial. Director of the Summer Course at the University of Almería. Visiting Professor at the Universities of Salamanca, San Sebastián, La Coruña, Seville, Navarra, Valencia, Polytechnic of Cartagena, SEK of Segovia, Alfonso X, Advanced Architecture Institute of Barcelona, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, London AA, Montpellier, Rome Tre , Calgliari, Toulouse, Javeriana from Bogotá, Chicago IIT and Arizona CAPLA. He is a professor of Projects of the ETSAM Academic Coordinator of the MCH of the ETSAM. UPM and Director of the Projects area. Professor of the subject "Sociology of Housing".
Nicolás Maruri Mendoza. Madrid 1961. Architect by the School of Architecture of Madrid. Doctorate from ETSAM with outstanding Cum Llaude, 2007. Prometheus Scholarship at Tecniche Hoschule Darmstatd. Germany. Master's Degree in Building from Columbia University. NY. He is a professor in the Projects Department of ETSAM. He has been: Secretary of the Court of the ETSAM End-of-Degree Project and Visiting Professor at the University of Arizona. He has given conferences in London AA, San Sebastian, SEK of Segovia.
Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Friedl Dicker (Vienna, July 30, 1898-Auschwitz, October 9, 1944). She began her studies, 1914, in photography and printing techniques at the Graphic Arts Research Institute. The following year, she became interested in the textile world entering the Faculty of fabrics of the Royal School of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1916 she entered the private art school of Johannes Itten, who will be one of the protagonists of the future Bauhaus.
Three years later (1919), she entered the Bauhaus school in Weimar where she continued his apprenticeship. There she carried out works of textile design, and binding and participated in typography workshops. She designed the costumes and sets for important plays like "The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare.
After finishing his studies in 1923, she founded the Werkstätten Bildender Kunst or "Workshops of Visual Arts" in Berlin together with Franz Singer, former partner of the Bauhaus.
In 1926 she returned to her hometown, Vienna, and there she founded a new studio, the Singer & Dicker, together with Franz Singer. Despite not having obtained any degree in architecture, in the new studio, they developed building projects, interior design and furniture, with which they won several awards.
In 1931, the Singer & Dicker studio fell apart and they began their solo careers. Friedl Dicker began to practice as an educator in Vienna and joined the anti-fascist movement. In 1934, she was arrested for developing activities related to communism.
After being released, she moved to Prague where Nazism was at its peak, something that would change the course of Friedl's life. She started with her textile works at the Spiegler & Sons factory and she, as a designer, received the award at the Vystava 38 Nachod exhibition.
In 1942, she received an order of deportation and in that same year she was transferred to Terezín, a town in the Czech Republic known for the concentration camp installed during her term during the Second World War, and in 1944 she was deported. Finally, Frield died at the age of 46, in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Three years later (1919), she entered the Bauhaus school in Weimar where she continued his apprenticeship. There she carried out works of textile design, and binding and participated in typography workshops. She designed the costumes and sets for important plays like "The Merchant of Venice" by William Shakespeare.
After finishing his studies in 1923, she founded the Werkstätten Bildender Kunst or "Workshops of Visual Arts" in Berlin together with Franz Singer, former partner of the Bauhaus.
In 1926 she returned to her hometown, Vienna, and there she founded a new studio, the Singer & Dicker, together with Franz Singer. Despite not having obtained any degree in architecture, in the new studio, they developed building projects, interior design and furniture, with which they won several awards.
In 1931, the Singer & Dicker studio fell apart and they began their solo careers. Friedl Dicker began to practice as an educator in Vienna and joined the anti-fascist movement. In 1934, she was arrested for developing activities related to communism.
After being released, she moved to Prague where Nazism was at its peak, something that would change the course of Friedl's life. She started with her textile works at the Spiegler & Sons factory and she, as a designer, received the award at the Vystava 38 Nachod exhibition.
In 1942, she received an order of deportation and in that same year she was transferred to Terezín, a town in the Czech Republic known for the concentration camp installed during her term during the Second World War, and in 1944 she was deported. Finally, Frield died at the age of 46, in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Wera Meyer-Waldeck
Wera Meyer-Waldeck (Dresden, Germany, May 1906 - Bonn, Germany, April 1964). She began her studies in 1921 as an educator at the Dresden Women's School, graduating in 1924. Between 1924 and 1927 she studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Dresden. In 1927 she entered the Bauhaus in Dessau. In her beginnings she studied with Marcel Breuer in the carpentry workshop making stools, sunbeds, folding tables... In 1928 she studied in the construction department with Hannes Meyer. In 1929, Wera worked on the design of furniture for the ADGB school in Bernau, near Berlin. In 1930 she interrupted her studies at the Bauhaus due to the death of her father. In 1931, she resumed her studies at school with Ludwig Hilberseimer and Mies van der Rohe. The following year, she finished her studies at the Bauhaus with a thesis on "elementary school and kindergarten of eight grades".
In 1934 she began working in Dessau as a draftsman for the construction of aircraft in the Junkers. From 1937 she will work in places such as the Supreme Construction Management of the Reichsautobahn, the Reichsbahn Construction Management in Berlin and the mining and metallurgical company Darwin-Thzynietz.
In 1939 she began her professional career as an architect, working for the National Railway Construction Authority. Between 1946-1948, she began working as a professor of interior design at the State University of Applied Arts in Dresden.
In 1948 she presented herself as an independent architect in Walldorf (Germany). The following year, she worked for Hans Schwippert in projects such as the interior design of the German Parliament office in Bonn, the interior design of two ministries, the Viktorshöhe guest house of the Federal Government and the Federal Chancellery. Notable Meyer-Waldeck projects include: the reconstruction of a hotel in Koblenz, several secondary schools, four collective housing units (Laubenganghäuser) for refugees from the East, the Catholic Foreign Relations Mission and a student residence in Bonn. In addition, Wera was a member of the Association of German Architects, of the Women's Federation of Germany and was the author of numerous articles in journals. Her last project is a dormitory of students in Bonn, in 1962.
Wera Meyer-Waldeck died of diabetes on April 25, 1964 in Bonn.
Atelier Fala
Fala Atelier is a naïve architecture practice based in Porto, led by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja. Established in 2013, the atelier works with methodic optimism on a wide range of projects, from territories to birdhouses.
Filipe Magalhães (Porto, 1987) graduated in architecture at faculdade de arquitectura do Porto and Fakulteta za Arhitekturo in Ljubljana; wrote the thesis ‘between the abstract and the figurative’. Worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Aanaa in Tokyo. Visiting professor at Bratislava’s faculty of architecture.
Ana Luisa Soares (Porto, 1988) graduated in architecture at faculdade de arquitectura do Porto and Tokyo university; wrote the thesis ‘The matter of ideas’. Worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Toyo Ito in Tokyo. Visiting professor at Bratislava’s faculty of architecture.
Ahmed Belkhodja (Lausanne, 1990) graduated in architecture at ETH Zurich after having also studied in Lausanne, Gothenburg and Singapore; worked with Harry Gugger in Basel, Obra architects in New York, and Atelier Bow-wow in Tokyo.
Filipe Magalhães (Porto, 1987) graduated in architecture at faculdade de arquitectura do Porto and Fakulteta za Arhitekturo in Ljubljana; wrote the thesis ‘between the abstract and the figurative’. Worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Aanaa in Tokyo. Visiting professor at Bratislava’s faculty of architecture.
Ana Luisa Soares (Porto, 1988) graduated in architecture at faculdade de arquitectura do Porto and Tokyo university; wrote the thesis ‘The matter of ideas’. Worked with Harry Gugger in Basel and Toyo Ito in Tokyo. Visiting professor at Bratislava’s faculty of architecture.
Ahmed Belkhodja (Lausanne, 1990) graduated in architecture at ETH Zurich after having also studied in Lausanne, Gothenburg and Singapore; worked with Harry Gugger in Basel, Obra architects in New York, and Atelier Bow-wow in Tokyo.
Renée Gailhoustet
Renée Gailhoustet, was born in Oran, French Algeria on 15 September 1929 and died in en Ivry-sur-Siene, Paris, on 4 January 2023. After first embarking on philosophy, she studied architecture at the École des beaux-arts in Paris under Marcel Lods, graduating in 1961. She dedicated her entire career to developing better social housing in Paris’ suburbs. Her approach to architecture evolved from early projects such as the Spinoza complex to the distinctive style of her best-known works: La Maladrerie and Le Liégat. The latter was been her home and studio since the project was completed.
Her interest in Parisian suburbs was piqued in 1962 when she joined the office of French architect Roland Dubrelle and participated in the urban renewal of Ivry-Sur-Seine. It was in this hugely influential project that she eventually became, together with Jean Renaudie, chief architect. In 1964, she established her own firm. Together with Renaudie, she put forward plans for a terraced approach to construction at Ivry. Rather than large complexes, she planned varied types of buildings, separated by open spaces, creating new horizons for the town and its social housing developments.
One of the instantly recognisable features of Gailhoustet’s projects are the staggered and planted terraces that allow nature to permeate domestic spaces in ways that are rarely seen in high-density housing. By using innovative geometries and mixing uses in her buildings, Gailhoustet has created a compelling argument for blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior, and, collective and individual.
In Ivry, between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, Gailhoustet designed the Raspail, Lénine, Jeanne-Hachette and Casanova towers, the Spinoza complex and the terraced apartment buildings, Le Liégat and Marat. Her development of the La Maladrerie district at Aubervilliers, completed in 1984, with a rich blend of flats, an old people's home, artists' studios and shops, is a good example of her approach. By providing a variety of options, she believed "each inhabitant can use the town as he wishes." Gailhoustet's works are to be found mainly in the Paris suburbs, first and foremost at Ivry-sur-Seine and Aubervilliers, but also in Saint-Denis (renovation of the Ilot Basilique, 1981–1985), Villejuif, Romainville and Villetaneuse. In addition, she also undertook two developments on the island of La Réunion.
Renée Gailhoustet also taught at the École Spéciale d'Architecture from 1973 to 1975 and published a number of books.
Her interest in Parisian suburbs was piqued in 1962 when she joined the office of French architect Roland Dubrelle and participated in the urban renewal of Ivry-Sur-Seine. It was in this hugely influential project that she eventually became, together with Jean Renaudie, chief architect. In 1964, she established her own firm. Together with Renaudie, she put forward plans for a terraced approach to construction at Ivry. Rather than large complexes, she planned varied types of buildings, separated by open spaces, creating new horizons for the town and its social housing developments.
One of the instantly recognisable features of Gailhoustet’s projects are the staggered and planted terraces that allow nature to permeate domestic spaces in ways that are rarely seen in high-density housing. By using innovative geometries and mixing uses in her buildings, Gailhoustet has created a compelling argument for blurring the boundaries between interior and exterior, and, collective and individual.
In Ivry, between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s, Gailhoustet designed the Raspail, Lénine, Jeanne-Hachette and Casanova towers, the Spinoza complex and the terraced apartment buildings, Le Liégat and Marat. Her development of the La Maladrerie district at Aubervilliers, completed in 1984, with a rich blend of flats, an old people's home, artists' studios and shops, is a good example of her approach. By providing a variety of options, she believed "each inhabitant can use the town as he wishes." Gailhoustet's works are to be found mainly in the Paris suburbs, first and foremost at Ivry-sur-Seine and Aubervilliers, but also in Saint-Denis (renovation of the Ilot Basilique, 1981–1985), Villejuif, Romainville and Villetaneuse. In addition, she also undertook two developments on the island of La Réunion.
Renée Gailhoustet also taught at the École Spéciale d'Architecture from 1973 to 1975 and published a number of books.
LYNDON NERI - ROSSANA HU. NERI AND HU
Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, founded in 2004 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu Design and Research Office is an inter-disciplinary architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. Neri&Hu works internationally providing architecture, interior, master planning, graphic, and product design services. Currently working on projects in many countries, Neri&Hu is composed of multi-cultural staff who speak over 30 different languages. The diversity of the team reinforces a core vision for the practice: to respond to a global worldview incorporating overlapping design disciplines for a new paradigm in architecture.
Lyndon Neri is a Founding Partner of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary international architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. In 2014, Wallpaper* announced Neri&Hu as 2014 Designer of The Year. In 2013, Mr. Neri was inducted into the U.S. Interior Design Hall of Fame with his partner Ms. Rossana Hu. The practice was the 2011 INSIDE Festival Overall Winner, won AR Awards for Emerging Architecture 2010 by Architectural Review and was selected as one of the Design Vanguards in 2009 by Architectural Record. Mr. Neri received a Master of Architecture at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. Prior to starting his own practice with partner Rossana Hu, he was the Director for Projects in Asia and an Associate for Michael Graves & Associates in Princeton for over 10 years, and also worked in New York City for various architectural firms.
Rossana Hu is a Founding Partner of Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary international architectural design practice based in Shanghai, China. In 2014, Wallpaper* announced Neri&Hu as 2014 Designer of The Year. In 2013, Mr. Neri was inducted into the U.S. Interior Design Hall of Fame with his partner Ms. Rossana Hu. The practice was the 2011 INSIDE Festival Overall Winner, won AR Awards for Emerging Architecture 2010 by Architectural Review and was selected as one of the Design Vanguards in 2009 by Architectural Record. Ms. Hu received a Master of Architecture and Urban Planning from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Music from the University of California at Berkeley. Before establishing Neri&Hu with her partner Lyndon Neri, Ms. Hu worked for Michael Graves & Associates, Ralph Lerner Architect in Princeton, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York City, and The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in San Francisco.
Olga Felip Ordis
Olga Felip Ordis (1980) studied architecture at the Superior School of Architecture of Barcelona (2005). During her degree, she received a scholarship for taking part in different exchange programs and workshops including the IDSA+U workshop at the School of Architecture of Edinburgh, the European exchange program EAEN working at the School of Architecture of Belleville–Paris and at UCLA University -California- and the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design ILAUD at UIAV – Venice | She received a scholarship for taking part at the International Congress of the Sixties Spanish Architecture and assisted at V DOCOMOMO Ibérico Congress about The GATPAC: Politics, culture and architecture on the thirties. In 2001 she assisted at the Summer School of the Architectural Association School of London. Co-founder of curatorial and design group MA!O, and co-founder of the architectural studio ARQUITECTURIA. Besides her professional career, she develops her thesis project for the research area of Theory and History of Architecture, at UPC Barcelona.
ARQUITECTURIA has worked on residential, sanitary, educational and cultural projects for both public and private sectors. The studio members studied in different European universities, still holding engagement with them, and are involved in research programmes and being in contact with innovation and research applied in the professional area.
