Ola Vasiljeva – Der Werkbund. Haus der F.
Edited by Kunstmuseen Krefeld
104 pages. German / English. 15 × 24 cm.
Thread-sewn softcover with illustrated dust jacket.
Grass Publishers, Brauweiler, 2025
ISBN 978-3-946848-23-3

DER WERKBUND. HAUS DER F. is the companion publication to Ola Vasiljeva’s 2019 exhibition Haus der F. at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum. Published in 2025 by Grass Publishers and Kunstmuseen Krefeld and designed by Tino Graß.

Haus der F. began with an invitation from the museum to engage directly with its applied arts collection. Upon closer inspection, the collection revealed a troubling pattern: the systematic suppression of women designers within design movements often celebrated as progressive and their persistent underrepresentation in major historical collections. This imbalance reflects a broader history of marginalization in which women’s contributions were dismissed, erased or ignored.

Vasiljeva’s project traced this erasure back to Das Haus der Frau, the 1914 Werkbund pavilion designed by and for women that was ridiculed, destroyed and subsequently forgotten for decades. The exhibition took shape as an unsettled interior: part workshop, part domestic space and part display room, where selected works from across the collection came together to quietly challenge fixed notions of gender and authorship. The book gathers Vasiljeva’s reflections and notes on selected works alongside a conversation with the exhibition’s curator Constanze Zawadsky.