MARGARETE SCHÜTTE-LIHOTZKY

(1897 – 2000)

Austria

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was the first female Austrian architect. She's mainly known for her Frankfurt Kitchen design, "the domestic factory or laboratory", intended to be affordable, efficient, functional and comfortable.
In 1918, Lihotzky became the first female student at the Kunstgewerbeschule (today University of Applied Arts Vienna), benefiting from classes with professors such as Oskar Strnad, a pioneer in Viennese social housing.
She collaborated with great architects and urban planners, such as Adolf Loos and Ernst May, working with the lather on the New Frankfurt project, a programme destined to tackle the Frankfurt's (like most of the other German cities) housing crisis, at that time.
Lihotzky mainly designed kindergartens, students' homes, schools and community buildings. It was in Frankfurt that she met work colleague Wilhelm Schütte, whom she married the following year.
A Nazi resistance activist, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky joined the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) in 1939, secretly meeting with the Austrian Communist resistance movement in December 1940. In 1941, Lihotzky was arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment in the Bavaria.