Harry Seidler
b. Vienna, 1923.

International and Modern architect who has sought a modern building culture for Australia. Seidler’s output, extending over more than four decades, represents an intelligent and far from rigid application of the tenets of Modernism. He studied at the University of Manitoba (1941-4) and completed his postgraduate studies under Walter Gropius at Harvard, where he was influenced by G1edion’s lectures. At Gropius’ suggestion, he attended Josef Albers’ summer course at Black Mountain College, North Carolina. In the years 1946-8 Seidler was Marcel Breuer’s assistant; in 1948 he set off for Sydney, stopping on the way at Oscar Niemeyer’s Rio de Janeiro office. Seidler’s first independent work in Australia, a house in Sydney for his mother (1950), had been designed in Breuer’s office. During the 1950s Seidler produced more than fifty houses based on this Breuer ? New England formula. By the 1960s, with the Australia Square commission, he had moved in the direction of large-scale government and commercial building projects. In the 1980s Seidler designed a remarkable series of office towers for Sydney and elsewhere in Australia. The rigour of his work stems from an unvarying constructional ethic; Josef Albers, Charles Perry, Frank Stella and others in art, and Pier Luigi Nervi in structure have been important influences.

List of major buildings / works:
Rose Seidler house, Turramurra, 1948-50.
Australia Square, Sydney, 1960-67.
Own offices, Milsons Point, 1971-3.
MLC Centre Tower, Sydney, 1972-5.
Commonwealth Government Trade Group of Offices, Barton, Canberra, 1973-5. Australian Embassy, Paris, France, 1973-7.
Grosvenor Place, Sydney, 1982-7.
Riverside Centre, Brisbane, 1986.

Bibliography:
Harry Seidler, Harry Seidler: Houses, Interiors, Projects, Sydney, 1954;
Harry Seidler, 1955-63, Sydney, 1963.
P. Blake, Architecture for the New World. The work of Harry Seidler, Sydney, 1973. “Harry Seidler”, World Architecture, 7, 1990.