Alfred Preis and Viennese Modernism in Hawai‘i

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52200/63.A.1WCECYVH

Keywords:

Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing

Abstract

Preis, who was a Viennese émigré and refugee architect with no early experience designing for tropical climates, went on to become one of the most prolific mid-century regionalist and modernist Hawai‘i designers. Although he is best known for his award-winning design for the USS Arizona Memorial (1962) - one of the ships infamously sunk in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Pries’s earlier institutional and residential commissions are arguably his most compelling. His Viennese roots directly influenced Pries’s approach to design in Hawai‘i. By engaging numerous precedents from Vienna, he eventually forged a novel idiom for Hawai‘i domestic design. This article will examine the interiors of two of Preis’s more than 100 single-family houses – the Scudder Residence (now the Scudder-Gillmar Residence) (1939-1940) and the Dr. Edward and Elsie Lau Residence (1951) – in order to highlight some of the ways in which Preis transported Viennese modern design ideas of the first three decades of the 20th century some 7,616 miles from Austria into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. His interior designs for these houses evidence strong relationships with the ideas of earlier Viennese modernists about spatial planning, the aesthetic uses of materials, furnishings, and color. Perhaps more than any other influence, Preis’s Vienna experience culminated in modern architecture that was as sensorially pleasurable as Hawai‘i itself.

How to Cite

Mcguire, L. (2021). Alfred Preis and Viennese Modernism in Hawai‘i. Docomomo Journal, (63), 48–55. https://doi.org/10.52200/63.A.1WCECYVH

Published

2021-08-31

Plaudit

Author Biography

Laura Mcguire, University of Hawaii at Manoa

(Chicago, Illinois, 1976) Architecture and design historian and Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She earned her PhD in Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014.

References

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MCGUIRE, Laura, “Alfred Preis and Rebuilding Laupahoēhoē School After a Tidal Wave: Making Modernism ‘Hawaiian’,” Proceedings of the International Network for Tropical Architecture 2019, forthcoming.

NIERHAUS, Andreas, OROSZ, Eva-Maria, KAPFINGER, Otto, Werkbundsiedlung Wien 1932: Ein Manifest des Neuen Wohnens, Vienna, Müry Salzmann, 2012.

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