A(R)TALK 11: Finding Ella Briggs – The Life and Work of an Unconventional Architect
Image: Princeton Unviersity Press
April 29, 2026 | 5.30 PM
TICKETS AVAILABLE IN DUE COURSE
We are pleased to present the 11th edition of our ongoing A(R)Talk series, featuring a panel discussion on the life and work of Austrian modernist architect, interior designer, and artist Ella Briggs (1880–1977). The event marks the recent publication of Finding Ella Briggs: The Life and Work of an Unconventional Architect (Princeton University Press, 2025), edited by cultural and design historian Dr. Elana Shapira and architectural historian Dr. Despina Stratigakos.
Born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Vienna, Briggs trained at the Kunstgewerbeschule Wien (School of Applied Arts in Vienna), where she studied with the renowned designer Koloman Moser. Early in her career she traveled to New York City, where by 1910 she had established herself as an original interior designer influenced by Secessionist trends. Among her notable early projects were the decoration of the social rooms of the New German Theatre at 59th Street and Madison Avenue and the furnishings for the New York Press Club building, which she completed together with Minna Leigh Mercer.
After returning to Vienna in 1911 to open her own interior design studio, Briggs became one of only two women architects to contribute to Red Vienna’s ambitious social housing program during the interwar period. Her remarkable career also included professional success in Weimar Berlin, imprisonment as a suspected spy in Mussolini’s Italy, persecution under the Nazi regime, and eventual exile in London, where she contributed to postwar reconstruction efforts. Despite a long and prolific career spanning several countries and decades, Briggs’s work remains largely absent from architectural history today.
Whether advocating for women’s access to architectural education or writing about innovative housing for American women’s magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Briggs embodied the transatlantic circulation of modernist ideas. Drawing on new research and international collaboration, the recently published volume brings together scholars who reassess her life, networks, and projects.
The evening will feature presentations by Dr. Despina Stratigakos and Dr. Elana Shapira. A discussion moderated by Dr. Stephanie Buhmann, Head of Visual Arts, Architecture, and Design at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, will frame the event. The program will conclude with an open Q&A session inviting audience participation. A reception will follow.
About the Speakers
Dr. Elana Shapira is a cultural and design historian who lectures in the Department of Cultural Studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She has organized international symposia and workshops on Viennese modernism, Austrian émigrés in the United States, Great Britain, and Israel, Jewish cultural identity in Central European modernism, and women artists and designers. She is co-editor of the anthologies Émigré Cultures in Design and Architecture (2017), Freud and the Émigré (2020), Gestalterinnen: Frauen, Design und Gesellschaft in der Wiener Zwischenkriegszeit (2023), and It Hurts! Violence against Women in Art and Psychoanalysis (2025). She has also edited Design Dialogue: Jews, Culture, and Viennese Modernism (2018), Designing Transformation: Jews and Cultural Identity in Central European Modernism (2021), Austrian Identity and Modernity: Culture and Politics in the 20th Century (2025), and Eine Wiener Schule in Berlin 1900–1933 (2026). Together with Despina Stratigakos and an international group of scholars, she co-authored Finding Ella Briggs: The Life and Work of an Unconventional Architect (2025). Her forthcoming co-edited volume is Crossing Borders: Central European Women in the Arts (2026).
Dr. Despina Stratigakos is SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University at Buffalo. Her research explores the intersections of power and architecture, with a particular focus on diversity in the profession. From 2018 to 2022 she served as UB Vice Provost for Inclusive Excellence. In 2011 she partnered with Mattel to create Architect Barbie, a project designed both to inspire and to raise questions about gender equity in architecture. Her 2016 book Where Are the Women Architects? examined women’s status in a field historically dominated by men. Her most recent book, Finding Ella Briggs, co-authored with Elana Shapira and an international team of researchers, highlights a designer committed to building a better world and ensuring that her legacy would not be forgotten.
Dr. Stephanie Buhmann (Moderator): Head of Visual Art, Architecture & Design at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York is a historian of art, architecture and design. Besides curating dozens of exhibitions, she has conducted over ninety published interviews with contemporary artists. In 2013 she conceived of an ongoing Studio Conversations series, focused on women of different generations working in diverse media. Her latest monograph Frederick Kiesler: Galaxies was published in 2023 (The Green Box, Berlin). She is a contributing author and co-editor of Roma Artist Ceija Stojka: What Should I Be Afraid of? (Hirmer Publishers, 2024), Touch Nature: Art in the Age of the Climate Crisis (Böhlau Publishers, 2024). Image Credits: Marcin Muchalski & Sabrina Vertzman, New York