Alfred Neumann (architect)

Czech-born architect This article is about the 20th-century architect. Alfred Neumann (1900–1968) was an Austrian-born, Jewish modernist architect who is best known for his buildings in Israel. In 1910, Neumann's family moved to Brno for his father's job at a joinery workshop. Following his graduation, Neumann served in the Austro Hungarian Army during World War II. After the war, he returned to his architecture studies, enrolling at the German Technical University in Brno . In 1922, Neumann returned to Vienna, where he attended Meisterschule fur Architektur of Vienna Akademie , studying under Peter Behrens . In 1928 and 1929, Neumann worked briefly in Algiers , French Algeria . In February 1945, Neumann was deported from his home in Prague to the Nazi ghetto and concentration camp of Theresienstadt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . After WWII, Neumann returned to Brno. In the following years, he worked at the Provincial Study and Planning Institute of Czechoslovakia where he contributed to a number of projects in the country. In 1949, Neumann immigrated to Israel where his practice shifted towards the development of modular structures. Neumann served on the faculty and later dean of the Israel Institute of Technology from 1952 to 1966. 1956, he published a pamphlet that called for architecture that better responded to human needs by reinventing systems of proportion and measurement and the design of buildings through the use of smaller modular subdivisions. During his tenure at the Israel Institute of Technology, Neumann worked closely with architect Zvi Hecker . In 1962, Neumann married Naomi Neumann, a former student of his; Naomi gave birth to a daughter, Eva Marie Neumann, the same year. Synagogue (1967), Mitzpe Ramon, Israel by Neumann and Zvi Hecker Neumann died of lung cancer while teaching in Quebec as a visiting professor at the Université Laval .¹