A women's Berlin : building the modern city / Despina Stratigakos.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stratigakos, Despina.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture and women--Germany--Berlin.

Architecture and women.

Space (Architecture)--Germany--Berlin.

Space (Architecture).

Berlin (Germany)--Social conditions--19th century.

Berlin (Germany).

Berlin (Germany)--Social conditions--20th century.

Germany--Berlin.

Physical Description:

xvii, 239 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2008]

Summary:

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, women began to claim Berlin as their own, expressing a vision of the German capital that embraced their feminine modernity, both culturally and architecturally. From residences to restaurants, schools to exhibition halls, a visible network of women's spaces arose to accommodate changing patterns of life and work.

A Women's Berlin retraces this largely forgotten city, which came into being in the years between German unification in 1871 and the demise of the monarchy in 1918 and laid the foundation for a novel experience of urban modernity. Despina Stratigakos shows how Berlin's concentration of women's building projects - collaborative efforts uniting female patrons, architects, and designers - produced a more fully realized vision of an alternative metropolis while exploring the nature of female aesthetics and spaces. At the same time that women were transforming the built environment, they were remaking Berlin in words and images. Female journalists, artists, political activists, and social reformers portrayed women as influential actors on the urban scene and encouraged female audiences to view their relationship to the city in a radically different light. Stratigakos reveals how women's remapping of Berlin connected the imaginary to the physical, merged dreams and asphalt, and inextricably linked the creation of the modern woman with that of the modern city.

Contents:

Introduction: a forgotten metropolis

Remapping Berlin: a modern woman's guidebook to the city

From Piccadilly to Potsdamer Strasse: the politics of clubhouse architecture

Home of our own: single women and the new domestic architecture

Exhibiting the new woman: the phenomenal success of Die Frau in Haus und Beruf

Architecture of social work: workers' clubs, social welfare institutions, and the debate over female housing inspectors

Epilogue: What a woman must know about Berlin, twenty years later.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-230) and index.

ISBN:

9780816653225

0816653224

9780816653232

0816653232

OCLC:

212909047