Alfred Preis
Beyond architecture: Alfred Preis, activist, environmentalist and visionaryIn 1963, when Alfred Preis was offered the position as State Planning Coordinator, it was the chance for him to pursue a consistent fight for addressing his social agendas through the institutions that were in power. Preis’s wife Janina remarked pointedly: “Do it. You are beating your head against the wall. You’re expending half of your working time without any compensation. You earn only half as much as you could. And whenever decisions are made, you lose, not every time, but most of the time. Why don’t try and work from the inside and see whether you can do better.”
Her argument points to the long and ardent agenda Preis had pursued since his arrival in Honolulu. It was the struggle to advocate for the preservation of the natural environment, for the strong support of art and aesthetics, as well as for a social morale that focused on the individual. This was rooted in some very familiar connections coming from Europe. “The fact that I grew up in Vienna laid much of the groundwork for the direction my development took. For instance, [Sigmund] Freud still lived in Vienna. His later philosophic ideas came at the last years of my high school education when I met so many bright people at the opera. When they were brand-new we read them and discussed them and debated them. I became very much interested and fascinated by psychoanalysis. And at that time, when interviewing clients, I found that it would be of great value for me to know how people feel and think. And I tried to apply the interview technique of psychoanalysis, which I had to refocus from any personal questions to how people wanted to function, to use things, and adapt themselves to a new and desired environment.”
Because he perceived himself somewhat as an alien, he felt he had to adopt as much as he could to the melting pot of the cultural diversity he encountered in Hawai‘i. Through various incidents, he became aware of his latent leadership skills. While he was immediately engaging in several local activities to acquaint himself with the small, insular intellectual crowd in Honolulu, Preis saw his first organizing and leadership qualities emerge at the planning of the 1948 Beaux Arts Ball, “Dali in Bali” organized by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Preis found himself not only competent in designing events and architecture but also in pulling various interest groups together to create art. “I discovered that I had unknown talents in me, a leadership capability, which I didn’t know. I discovered that I could be witty and naughty. I discovered that I had a very, very easily stimulated imagination and was inventive. The enormous success the ball had among artists and architects affected all of my future career.”
Preis became engaged in educational and artisan activities right from the start of his life and career in Hawai‘i. In 1946 he joined the staff of the Honolulu School of Arts and he became member of the AIA chapter for which he later served as president. He was part of the Honolulu Art Society where he spearheaded exhibitions and events. Some had been directly co-organized by Preis and his colleagues of Associated Architects, Fisk, Johnson and Ossipoff. One exhibit was centered around the Modern Home, a topic that was dear to Preis, partially through his earlier exposure at Dahl & Conrad who had mostly residential clients, but also likely because of his desire to relate architecture to people.
Throughout the following years, Preis would be a member of several clubs and committees that gave him entrée to present his ideas in front of communities in order to advocate for the preservation of the natural environment of Honolulu; for example, the islands’ subdivision plans, the Diamond Head Masterplan, the site location and design for the new Hawaiian State Capitol, and the Pali Lookout. Many of his agendas centered around contemporary preservationist ideas which also suited his then position as Chair of The Beautification Committee of the Honolulu Chamber of Commerce.
Some of his strongest social activities can be seen in his work for the Veterans Village, a low-cost housing project of 86 houses in Palolo Valley (1946-47), in collaboration with his colleagues at Associated Architects. Preis was not only the lead architect but also was early on involved in direct interaction with future residents, including wives of veterans to discuss the amenities and qualities of their proposals. His work for the Veterans Village and public parks indicates that Preis was increasingly an architect who selected many of his commissions based on principle, rather than flatly on financial gain. This can be further witnessed in one of his most prestigious projects to date, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) headquarters in Honolulu.
Preis’s own status as a minority refugee who had been displaced from his homeland under the threat of an oncoming racial genocide no doubt predisposed him to sympathy for the lives of exploited, non-white immigrant laborers. In response, he designed an extraordinary building that used the art of architecture as a social and political statement. With its rejection of the rigid linearity and symmetry of the Classicism used in the downtown Big Five buildings – symbols, for many, of colonialism and Caucasian dominance of the five major corporations that were prominent residues of colonial exploitation – the ILWU’s modernistic spaces and materials were legibly politically and socially progressive, and therefore embodied the ideals of the ILWU itself. Although it might be argued that Preis’s “importation” of certain elements of Western modernism were nevertheless expressive of Western dominance on the islands, Preis himself would probably have not considered this to be the case. Rather, his modernist experimentalism worked to capture the progressive spirit of Hawaii’s multiethnic labor movement.
The building itself affirmed that Preis worked not only as an architect but saw his work as an opportunity and window for social activism. This, of course also earned him scorn and political enemies. His left-leaning, socialist ideas made people question whether he harbored Communist sympathies. Even after the ILWU building was opened, it remained controversial and was the target of anti-Communist attacks during the same summer that the leaders of the ILWU were convicted on Smith Act violations.
Seemingly undeterred, Preis would continue to propose a series of pavilions for the vast park space in the Diamondhead volcano crater together with the World Brotherhood group, an organization for the promotion of understanding between people of different religions, which would represent the “different national cultures that contribute to the life of Hawai‘i,” and would “make each national group conscious of the other.” Preis felt that such a center might serve as a catalytic space for creative “exchange” between traveling designers and craftsmen of the Pan-Pacific region so that “fellow architects from other lands who pass through Honolulu” would be able to better understand the diversity of cultures and traditions across the islands. Although the scheme was never built, Preis’s idea was a visionary embrace of the complexity and beauty of the various creative traditions of Hawaii’s many different peoples.
His efforts to bring together creative persons from different traditions via intercultural artistic exchange across the heavily touristed island of O‘ahu would continue to guide his creative vision through the 1950s and into the 1960s, and would gradually transform his role as an activist into that of a state sponsored art advocate.
Formative years in Vienna and escape from the Nazis (1911-1939)
A new life in Hawaii: First steps as an architect & Internment as an Enemy Alien (1939 – 1942)
A Public Icon: From a Master of Hawaiian Modernism to Hawaii’s ‘Art Czar’
Public spaces and buildings for communities
Residential Work
The USS Arizona Memorial (1959-1962)
Vienna Modernism in Hawai‘i and the Bi-cultural Exchange
main
Hawai‘i: A Space In Between