![]() ![]() We see her lounging happily with Igor in a rowing boat (fig. 6, right). Black and white photos present the young Erica as an aspiring architect and political activist (fig. 6, left). At times arrestingly intimate, Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots is a unique portrait of a family in exile and a window into the life of the elusive Erica Mann.ĨArchival image material, consisting of photos, documents and drawings, is one major source of information on Erica Mann that the film offers. Overlaid with her own narration, and interspersed with comments by her brother Oscar, her sister Rhodia and other family friends, as well as diverse types of music, the content is as unbounded as the Maasai land she describes. #CLAVE PDF ARCHITECT 4 TV#Kenny Mann’s rich collage of archival TV footage, home video, wildlife documentary, family photos and documents, charts her family’s European past and their lives in Kenya. Kenny Mann’s film Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots is a particularly valuable source, as it provides insights into Erica’s family history, her personality and, to a more limited extent, her career and work. And while she was involved in the founding of two African journals- Build Kenya and Plan East Africa (figs. 5)-her intention was not to memorialise her own architecture and planning projects.ħAs I have not yet been able to travel to Kenya to visit what remains of her personal archive, which is held by her son Oscar, or the town planning department in Nairobi, I have been trying to uncover other possible sources of information about her life and work. Her work, ground-breaking as it may have been, was not published in the Western media. In fact it was only her friendship with Otto Koenigsberger, a fellow exiled Jewish architect and planner committed to improving the quality of life of the poor in the Global South, that brought her to my attention. And despite also being involved in international networks such as Doxiadis’ Ekistics group, as a female refugee from a country on Europe’s periphery working in Kenya she was truly on the fringes and off the radar. at the un-Habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976, and received some recognition-the Women of Kibweze project was judged one of the 100 best practices in the world at the Habitat II conference in Istanbul 6-Erica Mann’s contributions to planning and architecture remain largely unknown. ![]() ![]() URL: http:/ (.)ĦAlthough she presented the results of her work internationally, e.g. ![]() 6 Betty Caplan, “Kenya: A Woman of Substance,” The East African (Nairobi), 17 July 2007.Erica Mann’s dream since childhood was to be fulfilled: “Ever since I was a little girl I decided that one day I would come to Africa and look at what was in all the places that were white on the atlas and marked as unknown territory.” 4 Igor Mann had been offered a job in Fort Jameson, Rhodesia. In 1942 an opportunity arose for the couple to move to Africa. In late 1940, she and her husband Ignacius (later Igor) Mann, a Polish veterinarian also of Jewish origin, escaped the dangers of anti-Semitism and war on a journey through Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey to a refugee camp in Palestine. With the outbreak of World War II, Mann, then Erika Schoenbaum, was forced to return to Romania. Born in Vienna to Jewish parents, she was raised in Bucharest and studied architecture at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the only female in a class of 300. But I feel, you know, he is family.” 3 Erica Mann’s roots, however, are in Central Europe. “I have always considered the old man outside as my grandfather,” she says, “He looks ahead, but he also looks behind. 3In a later scene in Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots Erica Mann stands barefoot in a silver dressing gown on the threshold of her house in Nairobi, holding the thin wooden arm of a sculpture of an aged African man (fig. 2). ![]()
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