Harry Seidler LifeWork

Australia's most renowned modern architect, Harry Seidler designed over 180 projects, from single-family houses to apartment buildings, multistory office towers, and prominent government commissions, mostly in Australia, but also in Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Mexico and Hong Kong. This is the first and long-overdue book to give a complete overview of this award-winning architect's body of work. Seidler graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied under the legendary Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer; in 1946 he studied with Joseph Albers at fabled Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and he later worked as Marcel Breuer's first assistant in New York and for Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janerio before establishing his own practice in Sydney in 1948. A founding member of the Australian Architecture Association, in 1976 Seidler received the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal; he was made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1987; in 1996 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and in 2002 the Golden Badge of Honor for Merits for Vienna. Some of Seidler's major buildings are Australia Square Tower, the MLC Centre, Capita Centre and Grosvenor Place in Sydney, Wohnpark Neue Donau in Vienna, and the Australian Embassy in Paris, as well as a long series of dramatically innovative and sculptural houses with a rare sensitivity to site, space and structure. And while these soaring, inspiring houses have been the source of Seidler's fame within architectural circles, Harry seidler: LifeWork gives a complete view of this modern master's body of work for the first time.