Lilly Reich

Born around 1885, Lilly Reich began her professional journey in Vienna in 1908, working for Josef Hoffmann's Wiener Werkstätte, where she applied her embroidery training. By 1911, she returned to Berlin, designing furniture, clothing, and shop window displays. In 1912, she joined the Deutscher Werkbund, an organization dedicated to improving German industrial competitiveness, and notably designed a praised, functional working-class flat. Her influence grew, leading to her election as the first woman to the Werkbund's governing board in 1920. Reich further demonstrated her organizational and design prowess by curating two significant exhibitions for the Newark Museum in New Jersey between 1921 and 1922, showcasing German applied arts and industrial design. From 1924 to 1926, while organizing and designing trade fairs at the Messeamt in Frankfurt am Main, she met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, initiating a pivotal professional and personal partnership. Their collaboration yielded several notable projects, including interiors for the 1927 'Die Wohnung' exhibition in Stuttgart and, most famously, the German contribution to the 1929 Barcelona World Exposition. As artistic director, Reich co-designed the acclaimed Barcelona Pavilion and the iconic Barcelona Chair with van der Rohe. In 1932, van der Rohe invited her to teach and direct the interior design workshop at the Bauhaus, though the institution was soon closed by the Nazis in 1933. After World War II, she briefly taught at the Universität der Künste in Berlin before illness led to her resignation. Lilly Reich passed away on December 14, 1947, at the age of 62. Her foundational contributions to modern design were later highlighted in a 1996 exhibition at MoMA in New York, 'Lilly Reich: Designer and Architect', which brought renewed attention to her influential work.