Living... like this (So... wohnen). Wera Meyer-Waldeck as part of a network of architects involved in the way of living

Abstract

Through the figure of the architect Wera Meyer-Waldeck (1906-1964) as organizer of the exhibition So... Wohnen, a thin network of professional women is analyzed. In an early stage, at the end of the nineteenth century, Arminius, Hill, Henrietta Barnett and Addams were true social reformers. Already in the first half of the twentieth century the network extends from theorists and critics of architecture and urbanism, such as Bauer and Denby, to exhibition managers and interlocutors of a growing female population, who asked for new answers to the housing problem. All of them assume the design of the living space as a social responsibility, but Meyer-Waldeck demands more, as she seeks a female role in residential planning. There is evidence of a meeting between Bauer and Meyer-Waldeck. On the other hand, Bauer and Alison Smithson update the figures of Hill and Addams. There are coinciding points between the thinking of the couple of architects Alison and Peter Smithson (admirers of the work of Lilly Reich) and Meyer-Waldeck. These intersections allow us to affirm that the exhibition So... wohnen shows a new vision of austerity, where the ordinary becomes heroic (as the Smithsons and the Bauhaus would say) in post-war times.