Zum Inhalt springen

Collection Art, Architecture, Design University Gallery of the Angewandte

Moskau Material

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Designs for Children’s Furniture.

Eröffnung:

Info

Concept and Exhibition Design

Robert Müller

Overall Management

Cosima Rainer

Exhibition Management

Judith Burger, Laura Egger-Karlegger, Anja Seipenbusch-Hufschmied

Digitization project

Silvia Herkt, Bettina Buchendorfer

Location

University Gallery, Heiligenkreuzerhof
Entrance: Schönlaterngasse 5 or Grashofgasse 3, 1010 Vienna
Stairway 8, 1st Floor

Opening Hours

Mittwoch–Samstag: 14:00–18:00, an Feiertagen geschlossen

An exhibition by Collection and Archive

“I’m working a lot at the moment, but very happily in the comfort of my home. I'm taking part in a paid competition (there are two other competitors apart from me, both Russian) to design a childcare centre (100 crèche children and 140 kindergarten children) for the children of engineers from the War Academy, which is to be built here in Moscow in the summer. It’s a really nice task, but unfortunately it’s on a rather inconvenient building site in the middle of the city. The deadline is 25 November, so I still have a lot of work to do as it has to be beautifully presented ... Whoever wins will get a cash prize too, which will mean either a new fur coat or a trip to Vladivostok and back for me. Then afterwards, I have two books to work on, one about kindergartens, one about crèches ...” 
(Letter from MSL to Adele ‘Dele’ Hanakam, 30 Oct. 1933, MSL1933-10-30, p. 2–3)

In 1930, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) left Frankfurt am Main together with her husband Wilhelm Schütte and numerous members of the Ernst May Brigade for the USSR, where she worked at the Moscow Architectural Institute under Hannes Meyer until she left for Paris in 1937. In addition to numerous designs for model flats and kindergartens, children's sanatoriums and school buildings – projects which she was partly managed – from 1935 to 1937, she concentrated primarily on creating detailed designs for children's furniture and a model design for crèches. 

The materials for these furniture designs now preserved in the Collection and Archive were originally intended for two projects that never came to fruition: a research project with designs for standardized furniture for the care of infants in crèches and a scientifically supported model project with children's furniture for apartments. The latter includes ideas which were to be presented in the form of a sample exhibition (which was also never saw the light of day), for which Schütte-Lihotzky numbered her designs and grouped them into clusters, as well as categorizing them by age group and level of need. These notes are supplemented by short explanatory texts written by the architect herself.

On the 25th anniversary of Schütte-Lihotzky’s death and following the successful monographic exhibition curated by Bernadette Reinhold and Stephanie Buhmann for the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York in 2024, the Collection and Archive Institute will examine her work through a close reading of these two case studies. The exhibition Moscow Material uses the architect’s own writings to provide the first in-depth look at the sketches, preliminary studies, (detailed) plans and visualizations of the designs for children's furniture. In addition, numerous photographs of the architect from her time in Moscow as well as archive documents, letters and postcards provide a visual commentary on the construction of the USSR in the 1930s from her perspective. The initial design process for the children's furniture took place during the period known as the “Great Terror”, making it particularly revealing in terms of political and social tensions. As both visual and verbal statements, these designs and ideas not only allow us to understand Schütte-Lihotzky's private and public conception of design, but also to visualize the complex political and social demands of her position. 

This exhibition runs alongside the continued cataloguing and study of the architect’s legacy – which comprises over 10,000 objects – currently underway as part of a digitization project at the Collection and Archive.

The program accompanying the exhibition takes place in cooperation with the Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Zentrum.

Bilder

121/26

Margarete Schütte–Lihotzky, Krippenmöbel, 2 Bettchen, 1935–1937

Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Kunstsammlung und Archiv / Bildrecht, Wien 2025

121/32

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Krippenmöbel, Blumentischchen, 1935–1937

Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Kunstsammlung und Archiv / Bildrecht, Wien 2025

119/79

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Kindermöbel für Wohnungen, Stufen zum Waschen, 1935–1937

Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Kunstsammlung und Archiv / Bildrecht, Wien 2025

Bevorstehende Termine