Alfred Preis

Biography

The life story and oeuvre of the US-Austrian architect Alfred Preis (1911 -1993) is a fascinating one. Born, raised, and educated as an architect in Vienna, Preis had to flee Nazi occupied Austria in 1939 and emigrated to the paradisical Honolulu. Briefly imprisoned as an “enemy alien” after the United States entered World War II, he emerged as one of Hawaii’s leading architects in the 1950s and 60s. His celebrated career spanned over twenty-three years and comprised almost 180 built projects ranging from residences, schools, and parks to the famous USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.

Throughout his active years, he not only pioneered an unprecedented advocacy for the environment and arts but also distinctively merged Viennese modernism with Hawaiʻi’s cultures and climate, forging intriguing novel idioms for modern architecture and design in the tropics. He was, likely due to his own profound experiences as refugee, one of the few vocal advocates raising the call to preserve and celebrate the native Hawaiian culture. He supported labor unions and proposed – often through his architectural work – to merge rather dominate cultural peculiarities. Preis embraced Hawai’i as it had welcomed him and through his architecture, advocacy as founder and Executive Director of the State Foundation for the Culture and the Arts (1963 to 1980), and shaped a new form of regional modernism and awareness. In 1980, Preis helped found the Hawai‘i Arts Alliance, the nonprofit to advocate for the arts in Hawai‘i and to provide arts education across the islands.