Finding Ella Briggs: The Life and Work of an Unconventional Architect by Despina Stratigakos an Elana Shaira
Ella Briggs’ life story is worthy of a miniseries. From fin-de-siecle Vienna to Gilded Age New York, Weimar Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and exile in the UK (where she took refuge from the Nazis), her arc leaned toward adventure. She was a working architect at a time when few women were admitted to the profession. Biographers Despina Stratigakos and Elana Shapira identify Briggs as a participant in the “feminist groundswell” taking place in Vienna, where she emerged as an art nouveau artist and interior designer before proceeding into architecture. Not unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, she understood buildings holistically, their carpets and chairs as well as the walls and roofs.
For Finding Ella Briggs, the authors drew from the research of a team of contributors who gathered fragments of information and helped tie loose ends into a plausible account. Stratigakos and Shapira argue that among the reasons for Briggs’ neglect was her refusal to bend to the dogmas of modernism. Contrary to the self-serving “hero” of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, Briggs expressed herself through her perception of social needs. She could do flat roofs or pitched roofs. Stylistic purity was never her concern.
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