Myra Warhaftig

Myra Warhaftig was an architect and researcher. Her work can be positioned in the second feminist wave, part of a 'differencialist' notion of feminism. While the first feminist wave strived for legal equality between women and men, the second wave fought for the recognition of discrimination concerning gendered differences experienced on a personal level (Heynen 2007). By showing that inequalities can be produced through housing typologies, Myra Warhaftig’s work inscribes her understanding of 'space as an instrument' (Heynen 2013). I will make an account of different themes that can be found in her biography that can situate her work.

Myra Warhaftig was born in 1930 in the city of Haifa, located back then in Mandatory Palestine. Her family was liberal and middle-class, a situation representative of young people that would have the opportunity to study architecture at the time. Her parents belonged to the Second Aliyah, also named ‘middle-class’ Aliyah, who migrated from Poland to Palestine. They ran a leading printing house in Haifa and favoured their three daughters’ technical and scientific education (Krüger 2021).

Myra Warhaftig studied at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, where most teaching staff emigrated from European countries in the 1920s and 1930s. She was one of the first three women who studied architecture at the Technion. Professor Alexander Klein had a significant influence on her work. He was born in Odessa and came to Palestine from Germany. He founded the Research Institute for City Planning and Housing at the Technion. His approach was functionalist and influenced by the ideas of Existenzminimum, which were diffused after the First World War through the name of the II CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Archietctuire Moderne; Frankfurt, 1929) 'Wohnung für das Existenzminimum (dwelling for the minimum subsistence level). Throughout his career, he developed design methodologies for minimum dwellings based on Taylorist principles: optimising the surfaces and movements to increase productivity (Korbi and Migotto 2019). Throughout Myra Warhaftig’s carrier, this influence is recognisable in her architectural production.

Throughout her professional career, Myra Warhaftig encountered prominent figures in the architectural production of her time. She had several small comissions during her first years of working experience and often travelled between Israel and France. After the end of her first marriage to Zvi Hashin, a material scientist she met during her studies, she left for Paris against her parents’ approval. Her first experience in France was at the Brothers Perret Cabinet, and later, she met Georges Candilis through projects realised in Israel. Quite successfully, she worked on competitions for Team-X, for instance, with the second prize for the Centre

Fig. 3 - Myra Warhaftig's portrait, n. d.

Beaubourg in Paris. After Candilis/ Josic/ Woods won the Freien Universität Berlin Competition, they set up an office in West-Berlin which opened the way to Berlin for Myra Warhaftig. However, before coming to Berlin, along with her involvement at Team-X, she handled several social housing schemes in France. She started to build expertise in housing typologies, which will play a significant role in her reflections (Krüger 2021). In 1968, she was the only woman presented among 27 people on the cover of the Deutsche Bauzeitung titled Junge Berliner Architekten (young Berlin architects), standing next to her husband and many renowned Berlin architects such as Werner Düttman, Goerg Heinrich or Josef Paul Kleihues, who will play a significant role in the realisation of her building on the Dessauer Straße as the director of the Internationale Bauausstellung 1984/87 (IBA; International Building Exhibition).

If we look at Myra Warhaftig’s residential history, we can glimpse into the evolution of her ideas. It shows the embodiment of the well know ‘the personal is political’ that second-wave feminists brought forward. It is challenging to situate how and when a feminist awakening appeared in Myra Warhaftig’s lifepath. In 1969 she officially registered with the Union Internationale des Femmes Architectes founded by Solange d’Herbez de la Tour in Paris. Her living situation changed considerably from a small hotel room in Paris to an Altbau dwelling (built before 1949) on Magdeburger Platz in West Berlin with her second husband, Bernd Ruccius, and her first child. There, she was compelled to work from home in order to look after her young baby and continue to work as a freelance architect. From this point, a critical assessment of her housing situation emerged. Nevertheless, as the family of four, the fanily moved into the 160 square meters flat on the Nassauische Straße 36. It triggered her dwelling’s analysis as being a hindering condition. For example, the long distance between her working space to the kitchen or the children’s room, the acoustic separation from her young children or the inability to follow discussions when guests visited made her feel reduced to the serving function. After her separation from her husband, she looked specifically for a more recent building for her and her two daughters that would not follow the layout she interpreted as made for the Bourgeoisie of the 19th century. She moved into a three-bedroom public housing apartment on Einemstraße 8. Once more, her evaluation was dissenting. She decried the size difference between the bedrooms, which generated discord between her daughters. Moreover, the separation from the children when working in the kitchen did not allow for communication with them. Finally, after completing the Dessauer Straße project she developed in 1993, she moved in with her two daughters. Orly Fatal-Warhaftig described her mother during her childhood as being present, she would even included she and her sister while working. She and her sister would travel with her to conferences and congress or help with model making. Although Myra Warhaftig faced financial difficulties, as her daughter mentioned (Fatal-Warhaftig 2020), she remembers her mother always being attentive and giving her the feeling that she and her sister were the priority.

In 1972, Myra Warhaftig had a short five years’ experience in teaching architecture from 1972 to 1977 at the Institut für Wohnungsbau und Stadtteilplanung (Insitute for Housing and Urban Planning) of the Teschnischen Universität Berlin (TUB). The short fixed-term contract set up precarious working conditions for many women assistant researchers and seldom led to a professorship. Parallelly, she wrote her dissertation under Julius Posner supervision with the title 'Die Behinderung der Emanzipation der Frau durch die Wohnung und die Möglichkeit zur Überwindung' (The hindrance of women’s emancipation through the dwelling and the possibility of overcoming it) from 1974 to 1978 (Warhaftig 1982). With the dissertation, she could criticise social housing standards and explain their historical genealogy. Nevertheless, her approach was pragmatic. She analysed built typologies and designed a concrete proposal. Quickly out of stock after its publication in 1982, her ideas had a considerable resonance. She was invited for lectures, was published in mainstream magazines and even had a show on TV and radio (Krüger 2021). The principles she initiated through her research were materialised with the building on the Dessauer Straße. Another endeavour she pursued later in her life and necessary to mention is her engagement with the historiography of forgotten Jewish architects. She accomplished considerable work in rehabilitating and bringing back a disappeared part of German architecture history that led to several publications (Weizman 2020; Warhaftig 1996; 2005).

Looking at Myra Warhaftig’s life is to see the story of a constant search for emancipation. As a Jewish woman architect in Berlin, with the few privileges of her position, she advocated for an architecture that would support women’s liberation while also being vocal about the remembrance and recognition of Jewish planners. Her invisibility nowadays, knowing that she was working amongst the most recognised architects of her time in Berlin, is yet another argument that much work still needs to be done to reclaim stories of women’s voices who have been marginalised of architecture history.