Why was a pioneering Israeli architect erased from the pages of history?

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The architect Charlotte (Lotte) Cohn arrived in Jerusalem from Berlin in late 1921. As only the third woman to be awarded a degree in architecture from the Technical University of Berlin, Cohn was also a pioneer of architecture in Mandatory Palestine. The architectural profession was a bastion of male hegemony worldwide; women were considered unsuited for architecture because of the intellectual requirements and physical abilities it called for. It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that they began to be admitted to technical universities in Europe. Even then, when they sought employment as architects, they encountered barriers and conservative views about their professional ability. One concern was that women would occupy lucrative jobs, thus denying men these opportunities.

The situation in the Yishuv – the Jewish community of pre-state Israel – was different. A construction boom provided considerable planning work for men and women alike, as they pursued the common goal of realizing the Zionist vision. Furthermore, architecture, like other professions, was still in its infancy in Palestine and was not bound by the same conservative restrictions as in Europe.

The agricultural school in Moshav Nahalal, designed by Lotte Cohn.
Bitmuna Collection / Photo Schwartz

As Cohn wrote in 1935, “In Eretz Israel, women have already been recognized as engineers, architects, and agricultural workers… Sitting at the drafting table in the office or going to the municipality building to fight for a construction permit – such phenomena are no longer considered exceptional [for women], and no one mocks them anywhere.” With her characteristic humor she added, “Among the female architects there is a high percentage of important and exceptional women who possess extraordinary skills and have long since positioned themselves so that they are not only tolerated by their male professional colleagues, but are especially prized by them.”

Many outdoor urban spaces we enjoy, neighborhoods we choose to reside in, and buildings we like to visit, were designed by women architects who worked in Palestine in the 1930s – among them Elsa Gidoni Mandelstamm, Judith Stolzer-Segall, and Genia Averbuch. The shape of the city of Tel Aviv, for example, would not have been the same without the contribution of female architects. Zina Dizengoff Square, Beit Hehalutzot (the Women Pioneers’ House), the Kiryat Meir neighborhood, the Rassco neighborhood and many of the Bauhaus apartment buildings in the White City – all were designed by women. These professionals were admired both by their colleagues and by the public, and their work received extensive coverage in the local press and even in international architecture journals.

Children’s house at Kibbutz Heftziba, designed by Lotte Cohn, who arrived from Berlin in 1921.
Bitmuna Collection, Heftziba Archive

These architects lived and worked in Tel Aviv, but their projects extended through the entire country. Cohn’s plans and designs are milestones in the history of local architecture and of the Yishuv in general. For the first six years after her arrival in Mandatory Palestine, she worked with architect and town planner Richard Kauffmann, who headed the technical department of Hakhsharat Hayishuv (the Palestine Land Development Company). Together they planned numerous projects, including entire kibbutzim, new “garden neighborhoods” in Jerusalem and Haifa, and the newly founded Jezreel Valley town of Afula

Cohn, the first woman to own an architectural firm in Palestine, designed numerous innovative projects such as the agricultural school in Moshav Nahalal – the first such institution that was intended to train women for that field – and the country’s first electrically powered public kitchen for workers, in Tel Aviv. In addition to her productive output, Cohn took an active part in endeavors intended to promote the status of the architectural profession locally. She was among the founders of the Association of Architects in Israel and participated in the formulation of its guidelines. She lectured and wrote – in local professional journals, in women’s magazines, and in the daily press – about housing planning, focusing on the domestic sphere, particularly the kitchen. In this regard, too, Cohn was a pioneer, emphasizing in her writing the needs of women in Eretz Israel.

The Kete Dan hotel in Tel Aviv, 1933. Designed by Lotte Cohn.
Dan Rosen

Female architects, both experienced ones and recent graduates of the architecture faculty of Haifa’s Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, continued to stand out in the 1950s and 1960s. They were involved in designing many of the country’s most important institutional structures and worked in the private sector as well. These architects were commissioned to plan new neighborhoods, campuses of educational institutions, synagogues, and public buildings that became symbols of the young state. Shulamit Nadler and Ziva Armoni, for example, were members of the planning team for the National Library building in Jerusalem. Dora Gad imbued the interiors of both the Knesset and the National Library, El Al airplanes and vessels belonging to Zim Lines with an Israeli character and identity. Gad designed the Israel Museum together with architect Al Mansfeld, in the wake of an architectural competition which they entered together and won.

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The Women Pioneers’ House, designed by Elsa Gidoni.
Isaac Kalter / Courtesy of David Frenkel

Despite the significant contribution of women to the planning and designing of Israel’s built environment both institutional and private, few Israelis, even in academia, are aware of their local architectural work. Modern architecture during the Mandatory period, and the International Style in Tel Aviv in particular, have been studied intensively for decades, but the architectural work of women has been excluded from the research and consequently from Israeli public awareness. Female architects are hardly ever mentioned in scholarly books surveying the development of architecture in Israel, and few of them have their own Wikipedia entries. They rarely appear in academic syllabi, and to this day architecture students often complete their degrees without even coming across the names of the women who worked in the field in Israel before 1970.

Genia Averbuch, whose contribution to the cityscape of Tel Aviv is especially noteworthy, is the only one commemorated by a city: Tel Aviv chose to name a remote traffic circle on Bnei Dan Street, next to the Yarkon River, for her. The work of Lotte Cohn, the first woman in the field in Israel, is not included in the permanent exhibition of any museum in the country, and her name is equally absent from temporary exhibitions of local architecture. With the exception of Dora Gad, no woman architect has been recognized with a solo retrospective exhibition in any of Israel’s major museums. Gad was also the first woman to be awarded the Israel Prize for architecture, in 1966. It took another 44 years before another woman architect, Ada Karmi-Melamede, received the country’s premier award. They remain the only two women to have been awarded the prize to date. That is a rather disappointing response to the extensive and riveting role played by women in architecture.

The original Zina Dizengoff Square, designed by Genia Auerbach.
American Colony / Library of Congress

In line with an international trend, more Israeli women are choosing to become architects. Indeed, there is a pronounced majority of women in all the faculties of architecture in the country. And, 100 years on, there is also an absolute majority of women working in the architectural profession in Israel. Many of them hold key positions in the public sector, including in government ministries and municipalities. Others head successful architectural firms or are senior partners in them alongside men. And they continue to plan projects in a range of spheres and sizes for both the public and private sectors. However, despite their equal and even higher numbers and their impressive architectural achievements, the professional status of women architects remains inferior.

The picture that emerges from interviews I’ve conducted with women architects, including some who attended the Technion in the 1940s and 1950s, is more complex. Underlying the formal professional equality are hidden dimensions of inequality. Women architects mention a manifest lack of respect on the part of public officials toward them just because they are women, and complain that they have to keep proving themselves professionally. As in other fields, they have to demonstrate a degree of excellence that is not required of their male colleagues. Studies show that when a profession is tagged as “feminine,” it has a covert influence on monetary remuneration and contributes to a lowering of salaries in the field overall and of what is paid to women in particular.

Disparities also exist in the types of projects entrusted to women architects. Few of them are commissioned for projects such as residential towers and office buildings, which ensure high pay, prestige, publicity, and professional status. Since its founding, in 1962, the important, biennial Rechter Prize for architectural achievement has been awarded to men four times more frequently than it has to women.

Lounge, designed by Dora Gad, on the Israeli steamship Shalom.
Dora Gad Archive, College of Management Academic Studies & Israel Architecture Archive

In fact, the situation in Israel is no different than in many other places around the world. In her 2016 book “Where Are the Women Architects?” Despina Stratigakos, a professor of architecture at the University of Buffalo, examined issues of inequality relating to the work of female architects in the United States. After 100 years, she found, women in the profession are still struggling over almost the same issues. Young women tend to leave the profession within a few years of starting to work in architectural firms, with the result that society is losing the superb skills of individuals who could contribute to and advance the profession and thereby elevate the general quality of life. Stratigakos also writes about the lack of historical documentation on the internet, and specifically in Wikipedia, the absence of prestigious prizes awarded to women, and gender-biased media coverage that does a disservice to women architects. She also writes about a successful project of hers: the creation of “Architect Barbie,” which joined the popular doll’s range of professions and, as such, could become a role model for girls.

In the past decades, women – historians of architecture and researchers – have initiated studies and cooperative international efforts intended to cover women architects and their work. These scholars have launched groundbreaking studies, conferences and exhibitions; they are promoting academic writing on the subject as well as popular writing on the web; exchange knowledge and opinions; and work to ensure the place of female architects in the profession’s canon and history. We are witnessing the rapid development of the documentation and analysis of the long and rich heritage of women in architecture; and in Israel, too, histories of women are increasingly available.

It is no longer possible to ignore women in architecture – in classroom lectures, museum exhibitions, history books or competition juries. We need to act to ensure equal opportunities and true integration of women architects throughout the professional hierarchy in Israel. Acknowledging and applauding the rich and distinctive history of local women architects is an essential step toward achieving the desired change.

Dr. Sigal Davidi is an architect and a historian of architecture. Her book “Building a New Land: Women Architects and Women’s Organizations in Mandatory Palestine” was published in 2020 (in Hebrew).