Harry Seidler: The Collaborator
Traveling Exhibition
Curator Vladimir Belogolovsky in collaboration with Penelope Seidler
and the office of Harry Seidler and Associates, Sydney, Australia
Brief
Harry Seidler: The Collaborator is a traveling exhibition on life and work of Sydney architect Harry Seidler (1923-2006). The exhibition is being prepared and designed by curator Vladimir Belogolovsky in collaboration with Penelope Seidler and the office of Harry Seidler and Associates in Sydney, Australia. In almost sixty years, Harry Seidler, who started his practice in Sydney in 1948, designed over 180 projects. Most of these projects—from single family houses to apartment buildings, multi-story office towers, and prominent government commissions—were realized all over Australia, as well as in Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico, and Hong Kong.
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Harry Seidler at his Killara House
The Collaborator exhibition traces the life and work of Seidler, his key role in bringing Bauhaus principles to Australia, identify his distinctive architectural style—developed particularly in his later projects—and reveal many of his long-lasting collaborations with the leading architects, artists, and engineers of the twentieth century, which set a case study precedent for a multidisciplinary team approach in creating the cohesive synthesis of architecture, engineering, art, and design. Through these collaborations, the exhibition will superimpose Seidler’s work over his contemporaries’ and pinpoint particular influences on his own architecture. Apart from Seidler’s creative achievements, the exhibition will focus on his fascinating life, comprising a journey from his motherland of Austria to England, Canada, the United States, Brazil, and finally, Australia, where he settled in 1948, eventually becoming recognized as the country’s most distinguished architect. The exhibition presents personal stories of twentieth century art and architecture interwoven with times of war and peace through the life and work of one fascinating visionary—architect Harry Seidler.
Exhibition Venues and Dates
The Union of Architects of Latvia, Riga – 2012: August – September
Museum of Estonian Architecture, Tallinn – 2012: October – December
Australian Embassy, Paris, France – 2013: First quarter
AIA Center, Houston, USA – 2013: May-June
Black Mountain College Museum, North Carolina – 2013: July-August
Austrian Cultural Forum, Washington DC – 2013: September
Museum of Sydney, Sydney, Australia – 2013: Winter
Arrangements with additional venues are being made in Vienna and Hong Kong.
Book/Exhibition Catalogue
Exhibition catalogue with foreword by Kenneth Frampton will present Harry Seidler entire chronology along with detailed descriptions of 14 featured projects. It will have Harry Seidler’s bio, an interview with Penelope Seidler on life and work with the architect, text by architect Richard Francis-Jones, and Seidler’s own article Looking Forward. The book will be published in Australia by Images Publishing and distributed at all venues.
Harry Seidler
Harry Seidler, (25 June 1923 Vienna—9 March 2006 Sydney) was an Austrian-born Australian architect. Seidler was the first architect to fully express Bauhaus principles in Australia by building his first project for his parents, the Rose Seidler House (1950), in Wahroonga, north of Sydney.
Seidler was born in Vienna. At fifteen, he fled to England soon after Nazi Germany occupied Austria in 1938. His parents left Austria the same year and stayed during the war in England. They immigrated to Sydney in 1946. Seidler studied building and construction in Cambridge. In May 1940, he was interned by British authorities as an enemy alien. He was then shipped to Quebec, Canada, and remained interned until October 1941, when he was released on parole to study architecture at the University of Manitoba. He then received a scholarship to study at Harvard Graduate School of Design under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in 1945-46. After Harvard, he attended the renowned Black Mountain College in North Carolina, under the painter Josef Albers, then worked for Marcel Breuer in New York as the architect’s first assistant. Seidler also worked in the studio of Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janeiro before arriving to Sydney in 1948 at the invitation of his parents to design their house.
Seidler was the most accomplished and recognized Australian architect in the twentieth century. He was a founding member of the Australian Architecture Association. In 1984, the architect became the first Australian to be elected a member of the Académie d'architecture, Paris, and, in 1987, was made a Companion of the Order of Australia. He was awarded five Sulman Medals by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and received the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1976. In 1996, Seidler was honored with the Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 2002 Seidler received the Golden Badge of Honor for Merits for Vienna.
Featured Projects:
Houses
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Rose Seidler House, Wahroonga, Sydney, Australia, 1948-50
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Rose House, Wahroonga, Sydney, Australia, 1949-50
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Marcus Seidler House, Wahroonga, Sydney, Australia, 1949-51
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Harry and Penelope Seidler House, Killara, Sydney, Australia, 1966-67
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Berman House, Joadja, New South Wales, Australia, 1996-99
Sydney Towers
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Australia Square, Sydney, Australia, 1961-67
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MLC Centre, Sydney, Australia, 1972-1975
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Capita Centre, Sydney, Australia, 1984
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Grosvenor Place, Sydney, Australia, 1982-88
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Horizon Apartments, Darlinghurst, Sydney, Australia, 1990-98
Beyond Sydney
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Edmund Barton Building, Canberra, 1970-74
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Embassy of Australia, Paris, France, 1973-77
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Hong Kong Club, Hong Kong, 1980-84
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Wohnpark Neue Donau, Vienna, Austria, 1993-98
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