Book Review: Despina Stratigakos and Elana Shapira, Finding Ella Briggs: The Life and Work of an Unconventional Architect

In 2015, an exhibition entitled ‘Bilston’s Happy Housing – Otto Neurath’s vision for post-war modern living’ was mounted at Bilston Craft Gallery in the West Midlands co-curated by Dr Sabrina Rahman. Otto and Marie Neurath, the creators of the graphical lexicon ISOTYPE, fled fascist Austria in 1934 to settle in England. A decade later, Otto was commissioned as a ‘Consultant for Happiness’ by Bilston Borough Council for a pioneering housing project in the industrial wasteland of the Black Country. The resulting Stowlawn Estate set housing around village greens designed by Sir Charles Reilly, but it was Viennese architect Ella Briggs who animated Neurath’s social perspective through her refined domestic architecture. Despite her central role in the project, she remained something of a footnote due to the limited research available, an injustice now corrected in the publication of this book.

Rahman is one of sixteen contributors to this new volume on Ella Briggs, bringing diverse insights into her rich, and, as the title states, ‘unconventional’ career. The first part depicts her life and professional career through an extended biography, the second giving contemporary reflections through a series of thematic essays.