Egon Riss: A Life in Fragments

Thursday, 16 April 2026 | 6:30 – 8:30 pm

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This talk investigates the life and work of modernist emigré architect Egon Riss in Vienna, London and Scotland.

Photo: Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections

The talk will discuss aspects of The Fractured life of Egon Riss, the exhibition and publication researched and written by Leyla Daybelge, Denis Linehan, and Gary A. Boyd, and produced by the Isokon Gallery.

Photo: Pritchard Papers / UEA

It will explore his life and works in the contexts of: Red Vienna in the 1930s; his subsequent escape from the Nazis in 1938 and a life in London where he designed the elegant Penguin Donkey Bookcase; and finally, his architectural contributions to the National Coal Board in Scotland in the white heat of Nationalisation from the late 1940s until his death in 1964.

Photo: Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections

Gary A. Boyd is Professor of Architecture at University College Dublin and author of Architecture and the Face of Coal: Mining and Modern Britain (Lund Humphries, 2023).