Despina Stratigakos Wins Grant Foundation Award for Forthcoming 'Hitler at Home'

Despina Stratigakos, PhD, associate professor of architecture, was recently awarded a publication grant from the Graham Foundation for her forthcoming book, Hitler at Home.

Stratigakos was one of 63 individuals selected from 600 submissions from architectural scholars from around the world. The $9,500 grant will support printing costs as Stratigakos prepares for the September 2015 release of her book by Yale University Press.

Stratigakos, an internationally recognized architectural historian, spent two years at Munich’s Ludwig Maximillian University researching the book through the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship, awarded to her in 2012 by Germany's Gerda Henkel Foundation. Hitler at Home is the culmination of this work.

The book will examine the aesthetic and ideological construction of Hitler's domesticity, focusing on his two private residences, the Berghof on the Obersalzberg and his Munich apartment at Prinzregentenplatz 16. Stratigakos says her research "...explores the making of the Führer’s domestic spaces and reveals how designers and publicists, working closely with their client, employed this ostensibly private realm to polish and soften his public image, seducing audiences in Germany and abroad."

The Graham Foundation, which also awarded Stratigakos a research grant in 2010 for Hitler at Home, seeks to “advance new scholarship in the field of architecture, fuel creative experimentation and critical dialogue, and expand opportunities for public engagement with architecture and its role in contemporary society."

Stratigakos, whose research also focuses on gender and modernity in European cities and the underrepresentation of women in the architectural field, is author of the award-winning A Woman’s Berlin: Building the Modern City, and co-creator of Architect Barbie in the Barbie I Can Be series.