(1919-2006)

An exemplary disciple of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, Harry Seidler introduced the foundations of the Modern Movement in Australia. Educated at the University of Manitoba, Harvard and Black Mountain College, under the professorship of Josef Albers, Seidler moved to Sydney in 1947 to join his family who had fled the Nazi troops. He started his studio a year later.The Rose Seidler House, the first of his buildings and his parent’s future house, brought together the innovative principals of modernism from the Bauhaus, quite unusual in Australia at the time. Today, it is one of the country’s national heritage sites. During the fertile decade of the sixties, Seidler designed the controversial Blue Point Tower and the Australia Square building, bothin Sydney; and together with Pier Luigi Nervi, the Australian Embassy in Paris, a building thatbrought him acclaim as an international architect. In his native Austria, he designed the enormous Wohnpark Neue Donau apartment complex. Among the diverse awards that he received, of special note were the Gold Medals bestowed on him by the RAIA in 1976 and the RIBA in 1996.