Despina Stratigakos – författare

The fascinating untold story of how Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to build a model “Aryan” society in Norway during World War IIBetween 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model “Aryan” society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler’s Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire—one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings.Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler’s Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway’s Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme—a German cultural capital and naval base—remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance.A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler’s Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been—a world colonized under the swastika.

The first biography of an extraordinary woman and architect who left her mark on world capitals and reshaped modern designElla Briggs (1880–1977) was a talented architect, designer, and writer whose influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. She trained with the Viennese Secessionists and brought their radical ideas to Gilded Age New York. She designed modernist housing for the masses in Austria, was jailed as a suspected spy in Mussolini’s Italy, and thrived in Weimar Germany before suffering persecution under the Nazis. Fleeing to London, she contributed to England’s postwar reconstruction. Yet despite a long and prolific career, her name is largely forgotten today. Finding Ella Briggs restores Briggs to her rightful place in the history of modernist design.Despina Stratigakos and Elana Shapira bring together an international team of historians to provide the defining biography of this boldly unconventional designer. Whether she was fighting for integration at Europe’s architecture schools or writing about innovative houses for American women’s magazines like Good Housekeeping, Briggs embodied the transatlantic flow of modernism. This panoramic book uncovers new findings about Briggs, her networks, and projects, recovering the many facets of a life that spanned global borders and cultures.Beautifully illustrated and drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished research from archives around the world, Finding Ella Briggs is the inspiring story of a woman who defied all obstacles to pursue her dream of designing for the modern client.With contributions by Megan Brandow-Faller, Celina Kress, Dörte Kuhlmann, Ulrike Matzer, Christine Oertel, Eva B. Ottillinger, Barbara Penner, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Monika Platzer, Ursula Prokop, Sabrina Rahman, Katrin Stingl, Carmen Trifina, and Christine Zwingl.

A timely and important search for architecture''s missing womenFor a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one looks in the profession, the scarcer women become. Law and medicine, two equally demanding and traditionally male professions, have been much more successful in retaining and integrating women. So why do women still struggle to keep a toehold in architecture? Where Are the Women Architects? tells the story of women''s stagnating numbers in a profession that remains a male citadel, and explores how a new generation of activists is fighting back, grabbing headlines, and building coalitions that promise to bring about change.Despina Stratigakos''s provocative examination of the past, current, and potential future roles of women in the profession begins with the backstory, revealing how the field has dodged the question of women''s absence since the nineteenth century. It then turns to the status of women in architecture today, and the serious, entrenched hurdles they face. But the story isn''t without hope, and the book documents the rise of new advocates who are challenging the profession''s boys'' club, from its male-dominated elite prizes to the erasure of women architects from Wikipedia. These advocates include Stratigakos herself and here she also tells the story of her involvement in the controversial creation of Architect Barbie.Accessible, frank, and lively, Where Are the Women Architects? will be a revelation for readers far beyond the world of architecture.