Published: 9 September 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
SIGAL DAVIDI: Few people are aware of the important role women architects played during the British Mandate period
THE ZIONIST PROJECT is associated with massive building and impressive community development. While women played a significant role, their stories were not properly told. In my recent book I focused on these important women architects who were, literally, state builders. The first architect was Lotte Cohn, who emigrated from Berlin to Palestine in 1921 to become the first woman architect in the country.
Although women were not prevalent in the profession of architecture either in Palestine or the world in general, by the late 1930s there were 17 women architects who worked in all fields and on all scales of planning. Most of them graduates of technical universities in Germany and Vienna, these women left a distinctive mark on the planning, designing and building of the new Jewish society and the state of Israel.
From the 17 women I studied, three are highlighted here: Cohn (1893-1983), Elsa Gidoni Mandelstamm (1899-1978) and Genia Averbuch (1909-77). All three had a major effect on the assimilation of modern architecture in Palestine. All three ran successful architectural firms of their own, stood out among the architects in Palestine, and won the appreciation of the local architectural community and the public at large.
Among their notable achievements were projects initiated by Zionist women’s organisations for the welfare of women and children, laying the foundations for Israel’s socialist system based on modernistic ideas.
They planned extensively for four Zionist women’s organisations in Palestine, all founded in the 1920s: WIZO, General Council of Women Workers in Eretz Yisrael, WLI (Women’s League for Israel), and MWOA (Mizrahi Women of America).
These bodies advocated a feminine agenda of advancing women by introducing modernisation into the household. To that end, they established modalities that reflected the modernist ideology. Seeking to help women adapt to their new land and providing for their needs by creating a supportive women’s community, they set out to build autonomous modern establishments that were planned and managed by women for women.
