Lotte Cohn and Elsa Gidoni: Architects for WIZO
摘要
The chapter presents six nationally significant institutions designed by Lotte Cohn and Elsa Gidoni Mandelstamm for WIZO between 1925 and 1937. Prominent among them were the first Agricultural School for Women in pre-State Israel (Eretz Yisrael; Mandatory Palestine 1920–1948), designed by Cohn and inaugurated in 1925 in Nahalal, and the Domestic Science and Agricultural School in Tel Aviv, designed by Gidoni Mandelstamm and inaugurated in 1936. Other pioneering institutions discussed, all in Tel Aviv, include the WIZO Kitchen (1931), designed by Cohn, the first training kitchen in Mandatory Palestine connected to the grid and equipped with electric appliances; and WIZO House (1936), WIZO’s headquarters in Mandatory Palestine, designed by Gidoni Mandelstamm. Mothercraft Training and Child Welfare Centers were built in Tel Aviv’s poorest neighborhoods to provide mothers with pre and post-natal care. These include a center in the Yemenite neighborhood designed by Cohn (1933) and a center in the Nordia neighborhood redesigned by Gidoni Mandelstamm (1937). By analyzing the planning and design of these institutions, this chapter demonstrates how the use of modern architecture helped boost the status of household training and shape the identity of women to suit the image desired by the women’s organizations.