Research

  • "Memories from Resistance": Women, War, and the Forgotten Work of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, 1938–1989
  • GRANTEE
    Sophie Debiasi Hochhäusl
    GRANT YEAR
    2017

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, page from Prison Notebook, Vienna, Austria, c. 1942. Source: Erinnerungen aus dem Widerstand, 1938-1945 (1985), Archival Document Lost.

"Memories from Resistance" is an interdisciplinary architectural history that makes architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's 1985 German-language book Erinnerungen aus dem Widerstand available to English-speaking audiences, with the addition of an extended commentary and introduction. Alongside an in-depth analysis of Schütte-Lihotzky's design work, the project highlights the architect's engagement in the resistance movement against the Nazi regime, as well as her postwar activism in the Austrian women's movement, in which she served as president from 1948 to 1969. The project examines why this engagement and activism led to the ostracization of this important modernist in Austria after 1945, leaving a glaring hole in the literature, where Schütte-Lihotzky's postwar work remains forgotten. The proposed project fills this gap and elucidates Schütte-Lihotzky's continued commitment to designing and organizing housing, schools, and kindergartens in the context of larger concerns about gender equality and social justice beyond borders.

Sophie Debiasi Hochhäusl is an architectural historian whose scholarly work centers on modern architecture and urban culture in Austria, Germany, and the United States, with a focus on the history of social movements, women’s and gender studies, and environmental history. Her most recent work engages questions of housing, health, and food production in the city and the work of women in cooperatives. She has two forthcoming book projects: the monograph Inventing Environments—Constructing Territory: Citizens, Cooperatives, and the Politics of Modern Architecture in Vienna, 1904–1954, and the coedited volume Architecture, Environment, Territory: Essential Writings since 1850 with Irene Cheng and Daniel Barber. She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, among them the Graham Foundation's Carter Manny Award, the Bruno Zevi Award, and a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and will be joining the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor for architectural history and theory.