Dr. Preiser was the Director of Research for ARC and a Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture and Interior Design, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Preiser held a Ph.D. in man-environment relations from Pennsylvania State University, and master's degrees in architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the Technical University of Karlsruhe, Germany. His undergraduate degree in architecture was from the Technical University in Vienna, Austria.

Dr. Preiser had been an international building consultant to federal and state agencies, corporations and architects. He was a research architect with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research Laboratory and architect with several European architectural firms. He had over 35 years of graduate and undergraduate teaching experience in theory, research methods and applications, programming and evaluation of environments, and universal design.

He was principal investigator for research from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and several federal, state and local agencies. Topics included: post-occupancy evaluation; facility programming and hospital activation; universal design and guidance systems for the visually impaired; visual aesthetic assessments; design in the cross-cultural context; public housing, and evaluations of many other building types; and most recently, the Facilities Master Plan for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

His publications included 16 books and over 120 chapters, monographs and articles on building evaluation, programming, regional architecture, universal design, and environmental design research in general. He co-authored the book Post-Occupancy Evaluation and edited Facility Programming; Programming the Built Environment; Building Evaluation; Pueblo Style and Regional Architecture; Design Intervention: Toward A More Humane Architecture; Professional Practice in Facility Programming; Design Review: Challenging Urban Aesthetic Control; New Directions in Urban Public Housing; Directions in Person-Environment Research and Practice; Universal Design Handbook; Assessing Building Performance; and Designing for Designers.

He received many awards, fellowships and honors, including two Progressive Architecture Awards for Applied Research, two Fulbright Fellowships, two Professional Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.C. Faculty Achievement Award, the EDRA Career Award, the Rieveschl Award for Scholarly and Creative Works, and others.

He was former vice-chairman and secretary of Environmental Design Research Association and co-founder and former president, Society for Human Ecology (USA). He was chairman of the Committees on Improving Preliminary Planning/Programming and Post-Occupancy Evaluation Practices in the Building Process, Building Research Board, National Academy of Sciences. He was also associate editor for architecture for Environment and Behavior, and a member of the editorial advisory board of Architectural Science Review.

Facility Perspectives magazine featured an interview with Dr. Preiser in its ''Energy and the Environment'' series.