Harry Seidler (1923–2006) was an Austrian-born Australian architect, seen as the first to fully express the principles of the Bauhaus in Australia. Born in Vienna to a Jewish family, he fled the Nazis to Britain, where he was interned as an enemy alien, then studied at Harvard under Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, becoming Breuer's first assistant in New York. He received the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 1976 and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal.
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The Rose Seidler House in Wahroonga (1950), built for his parents in Sydney bushland, was the first completely modern house in Australia to express the Bauhaus approach and won the Sulman Award. With the Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi he designed Australia Square in Sydney (1967), then the world's tallest lightweight concrete building, and the MLC Centre (1977), a white octagonal tower on eight tapering corner columns that was Sydney's tallest office building until 1992. Blues Point Tower (1962) and Horizon Apartments (1998) show the influence of the painter Theo van Doesburg. Harry Seidler's buildings are studied for structure and for modernism adapted to the Australian climate.
Rose Seidler House1950 · Wahroonga
Australia Square1967 · Sydney
Riverside Centre1986 · Brisbane
QV11991 · Perth
Blues Point Tower1962 · Sydney
MLC Centre1977 · Sydney
Grosvenor Place1988 · Sydney
Horizon Apartments1998 · Sydney