A Spotlight On Ella Briggs — Austria’s First Female Architect

In the spring of 2024, a special package from the United States arrived at the Az W. The package contained a compact Compur plate camera complete with tripod and accessories along with portrait photos and more than 100 black-and-white photographs of Sicilian architecture — all from the mid-1920s. These are rare documents and equipment belonging to perhaps Austria’s first female architect, Ella Briggs (née Baumfeld, 1880–1977). Commissioned by a publisher in New York, she had travelled through Italy as a trained eye for a book project, capturing what was mostly rural architecture as well as bustling streets in photographs and sketches. As a woman traveling alone with extensive camera equipment, she was suspected of espionage and arrested. The case preoccupied both the Austrian and American press for weeks.

Trained at the Vienna School of Applied Arts (1901–1906) and the Technical University of Munich (architecture degree in 1920), her work ranged from numerous interiors from Breslau to New York, trade fair and exhibition designs in Berlin, several single-family houses in Berlin and the USA, to multi-storey residential buildings such as the Pestalozzi-Hof in Vienna. Despite this and like many of her female colleagues, there is a lack of readily accessible documentation of Ella Briggs’ multifaceted oeuvre. Much was most likely lost during her numerous moves. The sale of approximately 50 silver gelatin prints from her series of photographs of Italy to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London attests to the precarious situation of a self-employed architect who was forced to emigrate and had to establish herself financially in her new home, England, at nearly 60 years of age. Evidence of her work — albeit incomplete — is her restitution claim, which lists projects of hers ranging from interiors for the privileged to social housing developments.

Ella Briggs realised very early on that she could use magazines as a mass medium to engage with matters concerning contemporary living. She published equally widely in popular women’s magazines and in reputable professional journals. As an architect, she deliberately targeted future female users and clients, explaining, for example, the advantages of electrical household appliances and well-organised, “Taylorised” kitchens and apartments.

An international collective research project was launched with a workshop held at the Az W in 2022. For the first time, researchers succeeded in uncovering new sources on Ella Briggs, linking these in a shared archive and making them available for research. As a result, light is finally being shed on this woman’s multifaceted career.