Harry Seidler: Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design

Architecture, Art and Collaborative Design is a traveling exhibition celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Harry Seidler, the leading Australian architect of the twentieth century. The exhibition traces Austrian-born Seidler’s key role in bringing Bauhaus principles to Australia and identifies his distinctive place and hand within and beyond modernist design methodology.

Julian Rose House, Wahroonga, Sydney, 1949-50. Photography by Max Dupain.

The fifteen featured projects—five houses and five towers in Sydney, and five major commissions beyond Sydney—focus on Seidler’s lifelong creative collaborations, a pursuit he directly inherited from Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, with progressive artistic visionaries: architects Marcel Breuer and Oscar Niemeyer, engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, photographer Max Dupain, and artists Josef Albers, Alexander Calder, Norman Carlberg, Sol LeWitt, Charles Perry, Frank Stella, and Lin Utzon.

This exhibition was developed by Intercontinental Curatorial Project with Penelope Seidler and Harry Seidler & Associates in Sydney and is presented through architectural models, sculpture maquettes, photographs, films, correspondence, books, scrapbooks, periodicals, drawings, and original sketches—provided by the architect’s family, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, The Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University, and the private archives of artists Norman Carlberg, Charles Perry, and Lin Utzon.

“As much as the needs of fact, the needs of the spirit and the senses, must be satisfied. Architecture is as much a part of the realm of art as it is of technology; the fusion of thinking and feeling.” Harry Seidler, 1963.

"Harry Seidler: Lifework" book by Vladimir Belogolovsky with additional texts by Chris Abel, Barry Bergdoll, Norman Foster, Kenneth Frampton, and Oscar Niemeyer will be designed by Massimo Vignelli and published by Rizzoli in March 2014.

Venues and Dates:

Museum of Estonian Architecture, Tallinn, Estonia: October 4 to November 25, 2012.
National Gallery for Foreign Art, Sofia, Bulgaria: December 20, 2012 to January 20, 2013.
Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga, Latvia: Late February to late March, 2013.
AIA Center, Houston, USA: April 4 to May 31, 2013.
Black Mountain College Museum, North Carolina, USA: June 14 to September 7, 2013.
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada: September 12 to late October, 2013.
Museum of Sydney, Sydney, Australia: July 26 to November 9, 2014.
Planungswerkstatt, Vienna, Austria: Early December, 2014–mid-January, 2015.

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Berman House, Joadja, New South Wales, 1996-99. Photography by Eric Sierins.

Australian Embassy, Paris, France, 1973-77. Photography by Max Dupain.-77. Fotografía por Max Dupain.

Ian Thorpe Aquatic Centre, Sydney, 2001-07. Photography by Eric Sierins.

Seidlers Glen Street Penthouse, Sydney,1988. Photography by Eric Sierins.

Australia Square Tower, Sydney, 1961-67; Under Construction. Photography by Max Dupain.

Diagramas geométricos comparativos del plan para 20 edificios y proyectos. H. Seidler.

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VLADIMIR BELOGOLOVSKY

Vladimir Belogolovsky, founder of the New York-based Intercontinental Curatorial Project, organizes, curates, and designs architectural exhibitions worldwide. Trained as an architect at Cooper Union, he is the American correspondent for the Russian architectural journal TATLIN and has authored several books, including Felix Novikov, Green House, and Soviet Modernism: 1955-1985. His exhibitions include: Chess Game at the Russian Pavilion at the 11th Architecture Venice Biennale (2008), a retrospective of architect Ángel Fernández Alba at the Royal Botanical Gardens (Madrid, 2009), Green House (Moscow, 2009), and American Institute of Architects Today (Moscow, 2010). He is currently working on a book, Harry Seidler (Massimo Vignelli and Rizzoli, 2014) with foreword by Kenneth Frampton, introduction by Chris Abel, and tribute by Norman Foster. He is curating a Harry Seidler traveling exhibition to go to Tallinn, Riga, Paris, Houston, North Carolina, Washington DC, and Sydney from 2012 to 2014.

HARRY SEIDLER

Harry Seidler (25 June 1923 Vienna - 9 March 2006 Sydney) was the first architect to fully express Bauhaus principles in Australia, exemplified by his first project, which was built in 1950 for his parents—the Rose Seidler House in Wahroonga, north of Sydney. All his life, he was, in his own words, “the torchbearer of modern architecture”—a sincere missionary for the cause of modernism. Seidler left a distinct mark on our world, most noticeably with his Australian Embassy in Paris, Hong Kong Club in Central Hong Kong, Wohnpark Neue Donaularge residential community in Vienna, and, above all, through his many characteristic towers, which essentially define the skyline of contemporary Sydney.

In September 1948, Seidler established a practice in Sydney. The ambitious twenty-five-year-old’s tiny studio/apartment featured a prominently displayed statement: “Australia’s present day building practices are outdated. They cry out for rejuvenation. It is the policy of this office to create new standards which will produce a progressive contemporary architecture.” The architect’s prolific career to follow, spanning almost sixty years, proved him right. Seidler’s late work, however free and sculptural, is never arbitrary. His majestic forms were perpetually defined by rational planning, efficiency of standardized construction, and social and environmental considerations.