Erica Mann

Erica Mann (born Erika Schoenbaum, 1917 – 2007) was a Vienna-born architect and town planner. She went to school in Bucharest, Romania, and studied architecture at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Mann and her husband Igor Mann were secular Jews, and fled Romania during the Second World War. They lived in a refugee camp in what was then Northern Rhodesia. In 1942, Mann settled in Kenya. She went on to contribute to the 1948 master plans for Nairobi, Mombasa, and other towns and cities in Kenya. She was director of the "Women in Kibwezi" project, an initiative for improving living standards recognised at the United Nations Habitat II conference in 1996, and led or contributed to other NGOs related to women's cooperatives. She was named Architect Laureate for Kenya in 2003. Quotes [Urban planning is] an ideal profession for a woman because it builds on her innate capacity for providing an orderly and aesthetic environment for herself, her family and the community in which she lives. https://allafrica.com/stories/200707170653.html/ Kenya:A Woman of Substance Betty Caplan 2025-10-29 External links Category:Architects from Kenya Category:Social activists Category:Women activists from Kenya Category:1917 births Category:2007 deaths Category:Women born in the 1910s Category:Immigrants