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MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | FERGUSON, Johanna Eleanor (Miss)Born: 1900Died: 1982 ArchitectSACA:Reg No: 658 Year registered: 1937 | |||
ISAA, TIA, MRIA. FERGUSON, when she graduated in 1926, was one of the first female architects in the Netherlands. FERGUSON was born in Shanghai, into a Dutch family with ties to both colonial administration and Theosophy. Her father, though trained as a civil engineer, was at the time the director of the Chinese customs services. In 1912, she moved with her mother and siblings to the Netherlands, and six years later Joop, as she was then called, started studying architecture at the Delft Institute of Technology. While just a candidate-engineer, she published her pieces for do-it-yourself furniture in a women's magazine. She resided in her self-designed flat-roofed house near Breda where she obtained her engineer’s degree in 1926, then an already married woman, surname Van Everdingen. Subsequently she designed the reed-covered house De Huif in Wageningen for her mother (1927) and two almost identical flat-roofed houses near Utrecht for her father (1928 and 1935). She in that time had given birth to two children, then divorced her first husband, and in late 1932 she relocated to the Gooi region to join a Theosophist community. It was while here that she married her second husband, surname Boswinkel. The young family, in search of better prospects, emigrated to Johannesburg at the end of 1935. After she emigrated to South Africa, she registered there as an architect in 1937 [see Women in architecture - southern Africa]. She set up a joint practice with STAKESBY-LEWIS in Johannesburg in 1938 whom she married after another divorce, he then becoming her third husband. They shared an interest in Theosophy. She worked under her maiden name as the principal designer and he as the builder. They were joined by Conrad SAYCE in 1948 and according to the firm's letterhead dated 28th July, 1948 where she was in the partnership FERGUSON, STAKESBY-LEWIS, & SAYCE, its joint office was then in the modern Washington House. The expansion of the firm was presumably prompted by Eleanor’s increasing social activities alongside the design work. Following in the footsteps of Clara Codd and Jan Kruisheer, she was appointed National President of the Theosophical Society in southern Africa (1946–1953) in which capacity she lectured widely and published internationally. She also made an elaborate pro bono design for a new Lodge in Johannesburg, but this was never executed. Instead, the Stakesby-Lewises converted an existing villa into a ‘theosophical temple’, inaugurated in 1951. Apart from numerous private houses in Westcliff, Orchards and elsewhere, the firm was responsible for the Diamond Cutting Works (1943), Belen Bakery, (1944), the Bienvenue Shelter (1944), August House (1946) and Sterling House (1951), all in Johannesburg and all executed in a modernist brick aesthetic. In 1953 she relocated with her family to Salisbury (now Harare, Zimbabwe). In 1959 she is recorded as an absentee member of the TIA, of address NEM House, Salisbury (now Harare), Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She resigned from the Institute of South African Architects in 1967. In around 1961 moved to Camberley (United Kingdom), where she died in 1982. (Clarke and Kuipers in Clarke, Fisher and Kuipers 2021:68-69. See also Kuipers, M. 2022: 'Ir Johanna Eleanor Ferguson : Internationale vrouw in de bouw en Theosofie' Bulletin Knob 2:34-54.) (ISAA mem list) All truncated references not fully cited in 'References' are those of Joanna Walker's original text and cited in full in the 'Bibliography' entry of the Lexicon. References
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