Catherine Anne Chichester-Cooke (2 August 1942 – 20 February 2004), known as Catherine Cooke, was a British architect and a Russian scholar of international renown. She was lecturer in design at the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's underg ...

and also lectured and taught at the Department of Architecture at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

Life

Cooke was born in

Bishop's Stortford Bishop's Stortford is a historic market town in Hertfordshire, England, just west of the M11 motorway on the county boundary with Essex, north-east of central London, and by rail from Liverpool Street station. Stortford had an estimated popu ...

on 2 August 1942, the only child of a

brigadier Brigadier is a military rank, the seniority of which depends on the country. In some countries, it is a senior rank above colonel, equivalent to a brigadier general or commodore, typically commanding a brigade of several thousand soldiers. In ...

in the Royal Engineers. She trained as an architect between 1961-7 at the Department of Architecture at the

, where she was one of a handful of women students in her year. After a short spell in architectural practice in Helsinki, notably not at the office of the Finnish architect

Alvar Aalto Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (; 3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, s ...

as her father wanted, and then at

Casson Cassons or Casson is the name of a Yokuts Native American tribe in central eastern California. The Cassons are also called the Gashowu. The Casson Yokuts territory extended from the eastern side of San Joaquin Valley floor eastward to the upper f ...

Condor in London, she returned to Cambridge to undertake her Ph.D. on Soviet Town Planning, which she completed in 1975. Since then, Cooke’s interests broadened to cover all aspects of Soviet avant-garde design and Soviet architecture and town planning, and particularly Russian

Constructivist architecture Constructivist architecture was a constructivist style of modern architecture that flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s. Abstract and austere, the movement aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space, whil ...

. She wrote, was an editor and lectured extensively on these subjects. Her editorial involvement with the Architectural Design magazine published by Academy Books led to a number of publications on Russian architects and designers such as Chernikhov. Particularly well known are her publications on the Russian Avant-garde and Constructivism in the post 1917 era. A fluent Russian speaker, Cooke was significantly instrumental in raising awareness in the West both about Russian visual culture and the sorry plight of a number of Soviet buildings, which she did through her UK chairmanship of

Docomomo Docomomo International (sometimes written as DoCoMoMo or simply Docomomo) is a non-profit organization whose full title is: International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement. ...

(the international working party for the documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement). Cooke amassed a significant collection of books, posters, and ephemera over the course of her working life. The Catherine Cooke collection is now housed in

Cambridge University Library Cambridge University Library is the main research library of the University of Cambridge. It is the largest of the over 100 libraries within the university. The Library is a major scholarly resource for the members of the University of Cambr ...

. In July 2012, an exhibition of items from the collection was opened in the library's public exhibition centre. 05.07.12. Cooke died following a road accident in Cambridge on 20 February 2004, when "at the height of a research and writing career".

Works

Her contributions include: * (ed.), ''The Avant-Garde'' (AD magazine, 1988) * (ed.), ''Fantasy and Construction – Iakov Chernikhov'' (AD magazine, vol 59 no 7–8, London 1989) * ''Architectural Drawings of the Russian Avant-Garde'' (MOMA, 1990) * (with Igor Kazus) ''Soviet Architectural Competitions'' (Phaidon, 1992) * ''Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of Art, Architecture and the City'', Academy Editions, London, 1995 * (with

Dennis Sharp Dennis Sharp (30 November 1933 – 6 May 2010) was a British architect, professor, curator, historian, author and editor. His obituary in '' The Guardian'' stated that he 'was well-known as an architectural historian, teacher and active defender ...

) ''DOCOMOMO: The Modern Movement in Architecture'', Uitgeverij, 010 Publishers, 2000.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooke, Catherine 1942 births 2004 deaths English architectural historians 20th-century English architects Academics of the Open University British women architects British women historians