Lotte Cohen, the first woman architect in Israel, was a pillar in the field of Israeli architecture and worked relentlessly to promote the profession. She was certainly ahead of her time but historiography overlooked her work and contribution, and she was left in the shadow of male architects. As an architect and as an artist, I would like to mark the architect Lotte Cohen thanks to her being a professional, independent and groundbreaking woman.

Cohen was one of the first graduates of architectural studies in Germany, and the first woman to become a member of the organization of architects and engineers in Berlin Association of German Architects. In 1921, at the age of 28, Cohen immigrated to Israel after being approached by architect and urban planner Richard Kauffmann, and served as his personal assistant. While working for the Jewish Agency she created conceptual sketches of new patterns of settlement for the kibbutzim and moshavim for the Jewish settlements of the 20’s. In the early 30’s, Lotte Cohen founded her own office in Tel Aviv and designed housing and apartment buildings. The most prominent and well known is the "Kata-Dan" pension building (1932), which became one of the city's symbols of the 1930s and 1940s, due to its famous balconies. Her work was created with attentiveness, simplicity and functionality characteristic of the modernist approach she embraced as her architectural practice.

Dr. Iris Zonder, who wrote Lotte Cohen's biography and documented her diverse works, wrote: 'She was a pioneer and had a mission to fulfill. She devoted her life to work and architecture. Zionism was for her like a religion and she was its nun.' Her works are countless and are created in a wide range of scales. Ranging from the urban scale planning, to residential buildings of various sizes, public buildings and interior design. Zonder, who called Cohen 'the mother of Israeli architecture', noted that she was a significant and active partner in writing the history of the construction field in the country. Despite her achievements, Cohen was absent from the Israeli historical narrative for many years.

The showcased work echoes the 'concrete ceiling' woman have experienced and still are, in the field of architecture and construction, which is perceived as a masculine industry. The base of the work is a concrete beam, cracked and disintegrated, thus revealing Cohen's creative world on the one hand. On the other hand, the work relates to the weight that still lies upon women creators to this today. The metal panels, which are an abstract expression of Cohen’s drawings and buildings, are coping with the weight of the beam above them. Concrete and steel are regarded as the basic materials in modern architecture in general, and in Lotte Cohen’s in particular, and therefore were naturally chosen to be the raw materials for this work.


Material: mixed technique
Dimensions: 90x27x27 cm