Space Packing Architecture: The Life and Work of Alfred Neumann

Exhibition introducing a prominent modern architect born in Brno. Alfred Neumann studied at the Vienna academy under Peter Behrens. After completing his studies in the 1920s he designed furniture and later also buildings in Paris (1925), Algeria (1928–1929) and briefly also in the South African Republic. During the Second World War he was deported, in the last transport, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp due to his Jewish origin. In 1947 Neumann represented Czechoslovakia at the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Bridgwater, UK. After the communist coup in 1948 he emigrated to Israel where he lived and worked until 1965. In 1952 he started to teach at the Israel technological institute known asTechnion, in Haifa (north Israel) where he later became Dean of the Faculty of Architecture. In 1953 Neumann took part in another CIAM congress, this time in Aix-en-Provence, France where he represented Israel. In 1958 he set out on a journey around the world in order to find new inspirations. A year later he established his own architectural studio to which he invited two of his former students from Technion, Cvi Hecker and Eldar Sharon. Together they won, for example, the competition for the design of a town hall in Bat Jam. In 1961-1963, in parallel with the execution of the project of the Arabian town Ajn Rafa, the Dubiner tenement block was constructed in Ramat Gan to the design of the Neumann studio. The architect left Israel aged 65 and moved to Canada where he taught at Laval university in Québec and established a school of architecture, and where he died in autumn 1968.