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Harry Seidler, AC OBE ( June 25 , 1923 Vienna — March 9 , 2006 Sydney ) was an Austrian -born Australian Architect who is considered to be one of the leading exponents of Modernism in Australia and the first architect to fully express the principles of the Bauhaus in Australia. CAREER Seidler was born in Vienna , an Austrian of Romanian Jewish ancestry. He fled to England when Nazi Germany occupied Austria in 1938 . He was Interned by the British authorities as an enemy alien before being shipped to Canada in 1941, where he studied architecture at the University Of Manitoba . Although Seidler's biographies invariably associate him with the Bauhaus, he was ten years old when the Bauhaus was closed. He attended the Harvard Graduate School Of Design under Walter Gropius on a scholarship in 1944, attended Black Mountain College under the painter Josef Albers , and worked for Marcel Breuer in New York. After finishing his studies he worked in the studio of the architect Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janeiro. In 1948 Seidler went to Sydney , Australia to design a house for his mother. A decade later he gained Australian citizenship, married Penelope Evatt, 15 years his junior, and together they had two children. Seidler's best-known early work is the Rose Seidler House (1948-1950), a striking Bauhaus-styled home in Sydney's northern suburbs, built for his mother. The first domestic structure of its kind in Australia, it was opposed by the local building council, but is now classified as an historic home and is the site of a popular annual 1950s-themed fair. In the 1960s Seidler again broke new ground with his radical design for the Australia Square project (1961-67), which was the first circular high-rise tower block built in Australia, and one of the first buildings of its kind in the world. He was a founding member of the Australian Architecture Association . In 1984 he became the first Australian to be elected a member of the Acadamie d'Architecture, Paris and in 1987 was made a Companion of the Order Of Australia , an honour which he accepted in his tradmark suit and bowtie. Over the years Mr Seidler was also awarded five Sulman Medals by the Royal Australian Institute Of Architects , as well as the RAIA Gold Medal in 1976 , and the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute Of British Architects in 1996 . :"For 50 years Harry Seidler has played a vital role in international architecture. His work is widely recognised as an original and intensely creative contribution to the architecture of the second half of the 20th Century." ::--Dennis Sharp in his introduction to the book ''Master architects: Harry Seidler''. CONTROVERSY Seidler's work has been widely praised, he has won many awards, and he has been one of the most prolific Australian architects. However his designs are not univerally popular and he was often criticized for his single-minded pursuit of Modernist design principles. He has aggravated critics with aggressive and intimidatory defences of his work and reputation, and by his evident disdain for Australia's architectural heritage. In 2002, Seidler was quoted in '' The Age '' newspaper as saying that Australian architects: :"... don't measure up in international terms. There's nobody and nothing here that sends the blood pressure up. It's a backwater, a provincial dump in terms of the built environment." (''The Age'', 17 April 2002 ). One of his early major commissions, the Blues Point Tower residential block on Sydney Harbour, remains controversial and arguably the most reviled of all modern Sydney buildings. It has been widely criticised for both the rectilinear severity of its design and for its extremely prominent placement on Blues Point, a northern headland of the Harbour just west of the Sydney Harbour Bridge . Seidler pointed out that, despite its significant visual impact, his high-rise design leaves considerable open space around the building, whereas the only other way to accommodate the same number of residents on the site would have been to cover the entire area in low-rise apartments. Similar criticisms have been levelled at Seidler's high-rise complex, the "Horizon" apartments in Darlinghurst , Sydney (1990-98). Built on one of the highest points in the Sydney city area, residents enjoy commanding views of the city and harbour and west to the Blue Mountains . The tower is extremely prominent and can be seen for many kilometres in almost all directions; its design also stands out from the predominant Victorian and Edwardian terrace housing in the area. Like several of his buildings, the Horizon tower has been criticised as being more expressive of Seidler's purist vision than it is concerned with the comfort of its occupants, though these criticisms do not seem to come from the occupants of the multi-million dollar apartments themselves. Many of Seidler's designs were a highly demonstrative enactment of his Modernist design principles, and he appeared impervious to recent trends in architecture, such as the stylistically broader and more human-centred Post-modern styles expressed by younger contemporaries such as Glenn Murcutt . Murcutt's flowing, small-scale designs make extensive use of semi-permanent materials such as wood and Corrugated Iron -- in contrast to the glass and concrete so beloved of Modernists -- and his work has been profoundly shaped by an awareness of the unique qualities of the Australian landscape and climate -- whereas (in the words of Seidler critic Dr Garry Key) Seidler's buildings "are as ‘tempered by the land and climate’ as a supernova is by polystyrene". In the 1980s Seidler sued the Fairfax organisation for Defamation after a cartoon by Patrick Cook that critiqued Seidler's work was published in the '' National Times ''. Cook's cartoon (reproduced here ) depicted the "Harry Seidler Retirement Park", in which elderly people were jammed into a series of featureless boxes, with food and waste being shovelled in and out through narrow slits. Seidler's initial suit and a subsequent appeal were both was defeated in court, with the court finding that the cartoon was "an honest opinion based on the facts of Seidler's architecture, which was generally well known". Seidler raised the hackles of heritage advocates in the early 1990s with his plan to demolish an Edwardian-era building known as the Johnson's Overalls building, located at the corner of the city block occupied by Seidler's multi-storey "Grosvenor Place" office development, near Circular Quay . Seidler claimed that the existing building interfered with the streetscape of his creation and he doggedly insisted that it be demolished, but his plans were defeated in court and the Johnson's building was preserved. While Seidler was recovering from a Stroke in August 2005 , the surprise news came that Seidler, widely regarded as one of Australia's eminent citizens, had unknowingly lost his Australian citizenship, when in 1985 the Austrian government restored his Austrian citizenship he lost due to the Nazi occupation. Amidst protests by refugee advocates, the Australian government announced that it would restore Seidler's Australian citizenship immediately. {Link without Title} Harry Seidler never fully recovered from the stroke, and died in Sydney on March 9, 2006. BUILDINGS
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