Finding Ella Briggs: The Life and Work of an Unconventional Architect

Edited by Despina Stratigakos and Elana Shapira 
Contributions by Barbara Penner, Christine Oertel, Dörte Kuhlmann, Megan Brandow-Faller, Carmen Trifina, Ursula Prokop, Eva Ottillinger, Ulrike Matzer, Celina Kress, Christine Zwingl, Sabrina Rahman, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Katrin Stingl, and Monika Platzer

“Ella Briggs was among the first women in Europe to study architecture and work professionally as an architect. Impeccably researched, this book offers a rich narrative of an important early modernist designer and architect who was well known in her time and then forgotten. In recounting her story, this team of authors laudably contextualize Briggs’s experience within the broader story of early modernism.” —Christopher Long, author of The New Space: Movement and Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture

The first biography of an extraordinary woman and architect who left her mark on world capitals and reshaped modern design.

Ella 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Beautifully illustrated and drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished research from archives around the world, Finding Ella Briggs is the inspiring story of a woman who defied all obstacles to pursue her dream of designing for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.

Hardcover
312 Pages
Princeton University Press, 2025
10 x 6 x 1 inches
ISBN 9780691263953
Architecture, Women Designers