Margarita Stefanenko

Architect

 

Benjamin Eckel, last edited on 03.08.2022

Name:

Margarita Stefanenko

Life Dates:

b. 1933

Field of expertise:

Architectural design, interior design

Employers:

Project Planning Institute for Post- and Telecommunications Moscow

German Buidling Academy (Deutsche Bauakademie der DDR)

VEB Berlin Project

Education:

Moscow School of Architecture

Short Biography and Work

Margarita Stefanenko was born in Moscow in 1933, both of here parents worked as doctors. She studied at the Moscow School of Architecture from 1953 to 1959 and graduated with a diploma. She first worked at the Project Planning Institute for Post and Telecommunications in Moscow before moving to the GDR in 1960, where she was briefly involved in the construction of Hoyerswerda before working as a research assistant at the German Building Academy. From 1962 to 1964, she worked in the Central Design and Construction Office of the NVA, and later in the VEB Berlin Project and in another project planning company in Berlin.

Her projects included the interior design of the Hotel Stadt Berlin (1965-1969), on which she was group leader during the course of her work, as well as the interior design of the television tower (Fernsehturm Berlin) conversion (1970). Stefanenko also carried out the redesign of the congress hall in the building of the Central Committee of the SED, the reconstruction of the Karl Marx Party College (1975-1978, with other colleagues) and the interior design of the Friedrichstadtpalast (1980-1985). She also worked on designs for restaurants and holiday homes.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she continued to work as an architect until 1994.

Sources

Scheffler, Tanja: Die großen Unbekannten – Architektinnen der DDR, in: Bauwelt 22.2017, Berlin 2017, p. 10-13, available online: https://bauwelt.de/themen/betrifft/Die-grossen-Unbekannten-Architektinnen-der-DDR-3045387.html (last accessed on 03.08.2022)

Schulz, Klaus-Dieter: Margarita Stefanenko, in: Barth, Holger et al.: Vom Baukünstler zum Komplexprojektanten. Architekten in der DDR. Dokumentation eines IRS-Sammlungsbestandes biografischer Daten, Erkner 2000, p. 225.

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