Lotte Cohn

Lotte Cohn was born in 1893 in Charlottenburg

Lotte Cohn was born in 1893 in Charlottenburg, Berlin, the youngest of 7 children. Her father, Bernhard Cohn, was a Jewish doctor active in the Zionist movement. Her brother Emil was a writer and playwright.

She studied architecture at the Technical University in Berlin and graduated in 1916, among the first women to do so. From 1917 to 1919 she worked on rebuilding towns in East Prussia damaged in World War I.

In 1921 she moved to the Land of Israel to work with the architect Richard Kauffmann. Together they planned garden neighborhoods in Jerusalem and Haifa, kibbutzim and the town plan for Afula. On her own she designed the agricultural school for girls in Nahalal and the first children's house in a kibbutz, at Heftziba.

In the early 1930s she opened her own office in Tel Aviv. She designed the Kaete Dan hotel, houses for Gershom Scholem, buildings for WIZO and housing projects for Rassco. She also wrote and lectured on home and kitchen design.

She retired in the late 1960s and died in 1983. She was buried in Holon. In 2009 an exhibition on her work was shown in Tel Aviv and Berlin.