Nearly ten years ago, the Mainz University of Applied Sciences campus at Lucy-Hillebrand-Straße 2 opened. At that time, no navigation system could yet locate the new street. But that was about to change: Today, Lucy-Hillebrand-Straße can even be reached via two tram stops and is served by several bus routes. What has remained the same, however, is the question: “Who was Lucy Hillebrand, anyway?”
A native of Mainz, she not only left a lasting mark on the world of architecture but also helped break down the then-insular, male-dominated professional culture of architects. Drawing on the movement of the body in space, she developed a highly personal approach to architecture and was awarded honorary membership in the Deutscher Werkbund in 1985. Until 2002, her estate was the only one belonging to a female architect in the German Architecture Museum.
As part of the Klara Marie Faßbinder Visiting Professorship for Women’s and Gender Studies, Mainz University of Applied Sciences, in collaboration with the internationally renowned scholar Prof. Dr. Mary Pepchinski (Dresden University of Technology), produced a short video portrait of the woman after whom our street on the Campus is named. Prof. Dr. Pepchinski’s research focuses on modernist architecture and urban planning, as well as women architects of the 20th century. She wrote and narrated the text for the video portrait.
