Seidler, Harry

▪ 2007

      Austrian-born Australian architect (b. June 25, 1923, Vienna, Austria—March 9, 2006, Killara, N.S.W., Australia), brought modernism to Australian architecture with striking and often controversial commercial and residential buildings. After the Nazi Anschluss (1938) in Austria, Seidler's family fled to England. He was interned briefly as an enemy alien and then was transported to Canada, where he graduated (B.Arch., 1944) from the University of Manitoba. Seidler studied or apprenticed with famed architects who included Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Joseph Albers, Alvar Aalto, and Oscar Niemeyer before joining (1949) his parents in Sydney. Seidler's first significant commission, the glass-walled Rose Seidler House, built for his mother, was completed in 1950 and ultimately was taken over by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales. From the 1960s Harry Seidler and Associates was one of Australia's most prestigious design firms, responsible for such striking buildings as the Blues Point Tower overlooking Sydney Harbour, the circular office tower in Sydney's Australia Square, and the Australian embassy in Paris. Seidler was appointed OBE (1972), awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia (1987), and won a gold medal from both the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (1976) and the Royal Institute of British Architects (1996).

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