7 December 2021 – 5 February 2022
Frau Architekt

The "Frau Architekt" exhibition examines the history of the presence of women in the profession of architecture in Germany and Cyprus over the last 100 years, through the examples of 33 female architects. The exhibition, which was first presented at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt, has been expanded with the addition of Cypriot portraits curated by Teresa Tourvas and Müge Riza. Frau Architekt will be on show at the event hall of the Goethe-Institut Cyprus from 7 December 2021 until 5 February 2022.

The history of architecture of the last 100 years is also a history of women architects. The exhibition Frau Architekt examines the presence of women in the field of architecture in Germany and Cyprus, their achievements, their everyday reality and their struggle to establish equal professional opportunities. The exhibition explores the thematic through 33 portraits - 22 from Germany and eleven from Cyprus - with examples of projects and personal stories of women who have influenced and are still significantly influencing architecture.

Starting from the generation of a few pioneering women who at the beginning of the 20th century broke taboos about male-dominated professions, we reach the present day and a new generation of women who are developing important architectural work in their countries and abroad. While women architects have had a significant impact on the world in which they lived, architectural historiography has largely ignored their efforts. This exhibition is part of a recent larger international initiative to revise contemporary architectural history to more fairly reflect the contributions of women.

The exhibition begins with German pioneering women who began to study Architecture around 1900 and then tried to establish themselves in this profession. It concludes with building in the post-reunification period, in Berlin as well as in the new Federal States, that is, the former East Germany.

The Cypriot contribution to the Frau Architekt exhibition in Nicosia presents the portraits of six Greek Cypriots and five Turkish Cypriots through their individual and collaborative works, which range from designed and realized projects, to academia, activism, social engagement, entrepreneurship, sustainability, urbanism, and preservation. The exhibition serves as a great opportunity to present for the first time the portrait Maro Efthymiades-Adjini (1937-1997), the first known Cypriot female architect. She opened the way for other contemporaries such as Solmaz Feridun (1961), Eleni Romanou Demetriadou (1969), Androula Demetriou (1970) and Sevim Altan (1972).

The Frau Architekt exhibition was first presented at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt in 2017 and has been expanded with portraits of Cypriot women architects by the Goethe-Institut Cyprus in collaboration with Teresa Tourvas and Müge Riza.

The exhibition presented in Nicosia includes the following women architects: Emilie Winkelmann, Marie Frommer, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Lotte Stam-Beese, Lucy Hillebrand, Wera Meyer-Waldeck, Merete Mattern, Iris Dullin-Grund, Verena Dietrich, Ingeborg Kuhler, Gesine Weinmiller, Almut Grüntuch-Ernst, Maro Efthymiades-Adjini, İlkay Feridun, Athina Papadopoulou, Margarita Danou, Sevina Floridou, Münevver Özgür Özersay, Esra Can, Meltem Nalbantoğlu, Christiana Ioannou, Simzer Kaya, Veronika Antoniou.