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David L. Fleener (Ed.) |
New from DOM publishers:
David Fleener (ed.)
Not a Woman Architect
The Life and Work of Brigitte Peterhans
"Talk to me as an architect, don’t talk about women in architecture," replied Brigitte Peterhans (1928-2021) when an American newspaper reporter wanted to interview her about her role at SOM. The controversial architect was born in a small village in southern Germany, studied at the IIT in Chicago under Mies van der Rohe and Hilbersheimer, and would later become a partner at the global architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merill (SOM) - and all that beginning in the 1950s, a time dominated by social hierarchies and traditional gender roles.
In Not a Woman Architect. The Life and Work of Brigitte Peterhans, the architect David Fleener portrays the idiosyncratic, determined and, for the time, extremely unconventional personality. Born Eva Brigitte Schlaich, she was the sister of the world-renowned structural and civil engineer from Stuttgart Jörg Schlaich and belonged to the first generation of this family to make a name for themselves in architecture, technology, and design. Her education was influenced by the former Bauhaus teachers Mies, Hilbersheimer and Walter Peterhans; her husband had set up the photography workshop at Bauhaus in Dessau and was a professor at the IIT. Her work reflected the American mid-century modernism that was also cultivated at SOM. Later, towards the end of her creative career, she developed her own individual style.
Brigitte Peterhans resisted every attempt to be addressed as a female architect and insisted exclusively on her professional qualifications. With her commitment and determination, her open, critical, and straightforward manner, she had a decisive influence on the work of SOM - and also on her younger colleagues such as the author of this book, David Fleener. The richly illustrated volume documents her work and, together with contemporary witness accounts, provides a vivid impression of a professional life in an economically up-and-coming society anchored in traditions.
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