About the person Alfred Preis: Vienna in the tropics.

In the late 1930ies life circumstances for Jewish people and other groups in Austria became unbearable. Those who found a way to leave saved their life but had to find their place in a different society. Alfred Preis, a jew who converted to Christianity, somehow managed to finish his studies of architecture at the TU Wien a few months after the „Anschluss“ in 1938 and left with his spouse for an adventurous journey to Hawaii.
Over the years he was able to generate a combination of local architecture, optimized for the climatical challenges of a tropic island and based on his Viennese education. He is the author of a large number of projects, including some public and social projects and the well-known „USS Arizona“ Memorial.
Throughout his career, he focused on supporting art and the preservation of the landscape of Hawaii – after his architectural career he concentrated on these topics also successfully as a politician.

Guest of this episode is Axel Schmitzberger, who together with August Sarnitz, Laura McGuire, Stephen Phillips, and Christopher Long, condensed intense research in an exhibition and a fantastique book called „Alfred Preis -Displaced – The Tropical Modernism of the Austrian Emigrant and Architect of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor“.

Special thanks to Carrie Paterson for suggesting the theme and the great support!

online-exhibition

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

Edited and designed by Axel Schmitzberger
Contributions by Axel Schmitzberger, Stephen Phillips, August Sarnitz, Christopher Long, and Laura McGuire.
256 pages. Fully illustrated in color. Includes renderings, drawings, and documents.
September 2022. Softcover with bibliography, index and catalog raisonné.
Ebook also available9781954600140Published by DoppelHouse Press with Pacific Historic Parks.

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