Alfred Preis Displaced: The Tropical Modernism of the Austrian Emigrant and Architect of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor

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The first publication to catalog the complete works of architect and arts advocate Alfred Preis, a Viennese modernist who fled Nazi-occupied Austria and transformed regional Hawaiian architecture, with his best-known project being the USS ArizonaMemorial at Pearl Harbor.

Architect, planner, and arts advocate Alfred Preis (19111994) dedicated his many creative talents to his beloved, adopted home, Hawaii. Born to a Jewish family, raised, and educated in Vienna, Preis became an exile after escaping from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1939 and briefly being interned as an enemy alien when the United States entered World War II. Preis emerged as one of Hawaiis leading modern architects in the 1950s and 1960s. His celebrated architectural career spanned twenty-three years. In this time, he designed almost one hundred and eighty completed projects ranging from residences, schools, commercial buildings, and public parks. His new, regionalist vision for architecture and planning were specific to the Hawaiian context, its people, its tropical climate, and its stunning landscape. Preiss crowning achievement was his design for the famedUSS ArizonaMemorial at Pearl Harbor in 1962.

This is the first publication to examine Alfred Preiss body of work in architecture, which spans from 1939 to 1963, including not only several acclaimed public projects but also illustrating the transition from a European modern language into a regional modernism, unifying both cultures in distinct and pioneering ways.

In later years through his legislative work, Alfred Preis became a visionary advocate and leader for the public arts, creating the first 1% law in the United States, which stipulated that 1% of all public building construction be used for the purchase of public art.

Reviews

On May 30, 1962, the USS Arizona Memorial was officially dedicated. The white concrete and steel structure is 184 feet (56 metres) long and spans the wreckage. It was designed by Alfred Preis, an Austrian-born architect who was sent to a U.S. internment camp after the Pearl Harbor attack. His simple design features a concave silhouette, with the middle representing the countrys low point following the attack and the raised ends symbolizing victory. The 21 open-air windows are said to reference a 21-gun salute. In 1980 oversight of the memorial was transferred to the National Park Service. Approximately 1.8 million people visit the memorial each year.
Brittanica.com

Preis is best known for his design of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, though he worked extensively on residences, schools, and parks in Honolulu and Oahu. Preis was pragmatic, client-oriented, and a modernist with training in the holistic principles of Wagner and Loos that he understood and adopted. Over the years, he would shift to a regional modernism.
Architects+Artisans

The first major effort to this date to bring the Austrian-American architect back into the international spotlight by capturing, illustrating, and contextualizing the wide spectrum and influence of his prolific architectural and advocacy work. With his architecture as central focus, [Alfred Preis Displaced] seeks an opportunity to highlight Preiss built work to a larger audience and acknowledge the bi-cultural exchange between Austria and the US state of Hawaii.
ArtFix Daily

Committed to progressive racial and social causes in the islands political and social spheres [...] Preis articulated the value of locally-sourced materials and examples of his work include how the islands coped with material shortages after the war. He also constructed hundreds of homes for low-to-middle-income state residents, defining himself as an architect not for the elite, but as a designer for the people of Hawaii.
University of Hawaii News

Preis who fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1939 and two years later was forced into internment with Japanese and German nationals at the Sand Island Detainment Camp built some of the Hawaii's most enduring structures and institutions. He designed the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor and founded the Hawaii State Foundation for Culture and Arts, serving as executive director from 1966-1980.
On the Grid, newsletter of CalPoly Pomona, College of Environmental Design

Author Bio

Axel Schmitzberger is a licensed architect and professor at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Including his current engagement, he has taught at various academic institutions in the United States, Taiwan and Austria in the areas of Architecture, Multimedia and Graphic Design. He practiced in various architectural design and multimedia offices on internationally recognized projects prior to relocating to Los Angeles. After working for Morphosis Architects on several international buildings, he pursued his own practice APLATFORM, a multidisciplinary design office, and academia. He is the recipient of several awards for his internationally published residential, commercial and graphic design work. He has in the past received grants from the PCI foundation and the Austrian Ministry of Art, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. In 2019, he co-curated the exhibit Resident Alien Austrian Architects in America at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York. This was followed by an online exhibition on the Austrian-Hawaiian architect Alfred Preis in collaboration with the Austrian Foreign Ministry and Laura McGuire of University of Hawaii at Mnoa. He currently divides his time between working in his practice APLATFORM and teaching. He resides in Los Angeles, Hawaii and Austria.

Laura McGuire is a U.S.-based architecture and design historian. She is an Assistant Professor of Architectural History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in architecture and design history and theory. She has also taught at the School of Architecture + Design at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her Ph.D. in Architecture. Her research focuses on modernist American and Central European architecture and design of the interwar twentieth century, especially the role of Jewish migrs and refugees on design theory and culture in the United States. She is currently writing a book on the architect Alfred Preis, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria, who designed some of Hawaiis most significant examples of midcentury modern architecture. Her essays on Alfred Preis and Frederick Kiesler have appeared in numerous books and journals, including Docomomo Journal, Umn Art, Interiors, The Routledge Companion to Art Deco (Routledge, 2019), Frederick Kiesler, Face to Face with the Avant-Garde: Essential Essays on Networks and Impact (Birkhuser, 2018) Architectures of Display: Department Stores and Modern Retail (Routledge, 2017), Endless Kiesler (Birkhuser, 2015), Frederick Kiesler: Theatervisionre Architekt Knstler (KHM/ Brandsttter, 2012), and Norman Bel Geddes Designs America (Abrams, 2012). She also edited and translated the English edition of Ursula Prokops Jacques and Jacqueline Groag, Architect and Designer: Two Hidden Figures of the Viennese Modern Movement (DoppelHouse Press, 2019).

Dr. Stephen Phillips, FAIA is an architect, scholar, historian, curator, and educator. He is principal architect at Stephen Phillips Architects (SPARCHS) and Professor of Architecture at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He is the Founding Director of the Cal Poly Los Angeles Metropolitan Program in Architecture and Urban Design. Phillips received his B.A. from Yale University, M.Arch. from University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. from Princeton University. He has previously taught at U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, SCIArc, CCA, and Art Center College of Design. Phillips is the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships including those from the Getty Research Institute, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Graham Foundation, the Bruno Zevi Foundation, the AIA, and the ACSA. Building designs by Stephen Phillips Architects (SPARCHS) have been published internationally in DOMUS, Der Spiegel, The Architects Newspaper, Dezeen, 7x7, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Sunset Magazine, among other notable newspapers, magazines, and journals. Phillips is the author of L.A. [Ten]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s (Lars Mller Publishers, 2014), and Elastic Architecture: Frederick Kiesler and Design Research in the First Age of Robotic Culture (MIT Press, 2017).

August Sarnitz is a practicing architect and Professor Emeritus of Architecture, Architectural History and Architectural Theory at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. After his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, and the post-graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT 1981/82), he earned a doctorate degree in Technical Sciences Architecture from the Vienna University of Technology in 1983. He held various positions at the Academy of Fine Arts, including Chairman of the Senate (20032006). He has lectured regularly and participated in international symposia in Europe and the United States, South America and New Zealand. The focus of his scientific work has been on contemporary and modern architecture, urban design and emigration architecture in the 20th century. He has been a guest professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, (1988) and at the Rhode Island School of Design, (1990). He has curated a variety of exhibitions on urbanism, architecture and art. August Sarnitz was awarded a number of prizes and awards, including: Visiting Fulbright Professor Prize (1990), Institute of International Education Scholarship (1982), New York William Shepherd Fund.

Christopher Long is Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professor of Architectural and Design History at the University of Texas at Austin. He studied in Graz, Munich, and Vienna, and began his teaching career at the Central European University in Prague. He has published widely on various aspects of Central European and American modernism. His recent books include The New Space: Movement and Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016); Essays on Adolf Loos (Prague: Kant, 2019); Adolf Loos on Trial (Prague: Kant, 2017); Adolf Loos: The Late Houses (Prague: Kant , 2020); and, most recently, Jock PetersArchitecture and Design: The Varieties of Modernism (New York: Bauer & Dean, 2021).