Defiantly Modern: The Unconventional Life and Work of Ella Briggs

Ella Briggs was a pioneering Viennese architect, designer, and writer whose influential practice across Vienna, New York, Berlin, and London actively shaped global perspectives on modern living. She trained with members of the Vienna Secession, designed modernist housing for the masses in Austria, was jailed as a suspected spy in Mussolini’s Italy, and thrived in Weimar Germany before suffering persecution under the Nazis and fleeing to London where she contributed to England’s postwar reconstruction. Despite a long and prolific career, her name faded into obscurity. The newly published biography, Finding Ella Briggs, presents previously unpublished research from archives around the world and restores Briggs’s groundbreaking legacy and rightful place in the history of modernist design.