ABSTRACT
Whilst female actors clearly played an important role in the organisation and realisation of the CIAM congresses; this contribution is largely yet to be addressed in the historiography of modern architecture. In support of the second-wave feminist project to write women into the canon of modern architectural history, I here discuss the case of Frieda Fluck (1897-1974), the wife of the Dutch urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren. Through her position as van Eesteren’s intellectual sparring partner in a range of professional matters, and also through her position within wider social settings and exchanges, Frieda Fluck exerted influence on the CIAM, albeit indirectly, and in forms (like the love letter) that have either gone unnoticed or been ignored. Through a close reading of her correspondence, Fluck’s story suggests that we must reframe received understandings of how we might write a history of the CIAM: the CIAM must be viewed as a network through which influence was exerted in a range of personal, passionate, and intimate ways.
