Harry SeidlerHarry Seidler, an Austrian-born architect whose high-rise commercial and residential towers modernised the skyline and polarised the residents of his adopted hometown of Sydney, Australia, has died. He was 82.
Seidler had suffered a debilitating stroke in April 2005 and died at home last Thursday.
In a practice spanning more than 50 years, primarily in Australia, Seidler built single-family homes, apartment buildings and office complexes based on 20th-century structural principles and materials.
"Harry's buildings have changed the Sydney skyline," Bob Nation, national president of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, said. "Love them or hate them, they are an intrinsic part of the Sydney that we all know and appreciate."
Seidler's innovative urban projects sought to tame the sprawl of post-war Sydney by providing high-density housing for residents closer to their jobs.
He carved out green space and public gathering spots within the boundaries of private developments that often soared many storeys higher than any previous buildings to capture the spectacular harbour views that became increasingly prized by city dwellers.
His typically geometric structures of concrete and glass reflected the sleek, spare style of the Bauhaus movement of his native Austria.
Born in Vienna in June 1923, Seidler and his family, who were Jewish, fled the Nazi occupation in 1938. His parents, who eventually settled in Australia, sent their 15-year-old son to England. In 1940, after the start of the second World War, he was interned as an enemy alien before being shipped to a wartime camp in Canada.
After his release in 1941, he studied architecture at the University of Manitoba. Then, at Harvard, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius instilled in Seidler an appreciation for the Modernist school of industrial design that strove to connect artists, architects and craftsmen.
After honing his skills with mentors Alvar Aalto at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Marcel Breuer in New York, Seidler moved to Australia in 1948 to design a home for his parents and to establish his practice.
His Australia Square was a landmark urban renewal project in the 1960s, replacing 30 squat buildings on a large block with one towering 50-storey circular concrete structure. At the base of the office complex, a plaza with fountains, trees and restaurant provided an oasis amid the central business district.
When Seidler's 25-storey Blues Point Tower apartments went up in 1961, many criticised its monolithic proportions and declared the stark, rectangular box of a building incompatible with the leafy neighbourhood it dwarfed. City planners blocked the construction of other apartment towers, sparking a decades-long debate between the prickly architect and those who could approve his designs.
He was awarded the Gold Medal of the RAIA in 1976 and was honoured with the Royal Institute of British Architects' Gold Medal in 1996.
Seidler is survived by his wife, Penelope, a son, Timothy, and a daughter, Polly.
Harry Seidler, born June 25th, 1923, died March 16th, 2006