Rose Seidler House in the Sydney suburb of Wahroonga is one of Australia's most iconic buildings, but in fact it was designed before the architect, Harry Seidler, had ever set foot in the country. Colin Bisset takes a look at how the Austrian-born Seidler changed the architectural conversation Down Under.
Rose Seidler House is one of Australia's most famous buildings and one of its most unusual. The house is the work of architect Harry Seidler, who had the idea already sketched before he even set foot on Australian soil.
Seidler's stellar career started when he fled Vienna in 1938 after the Nazis annexed Austria. He trained in Canada but went on to work with Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, as well as Brazil's Oscar Niemeyer before arriving in Australia in 1948. His parents lured him here with his first proper commission, and the house was completed in 1951 on a large block of land at the edge of Sydney.
Though Seidler had never worked with Le Corbusier, it's a rather Corbusian piece of work, with the main floor sitting on a concrete slab that is raised on slender steel supports above a garage and entrance area, allowing sweeping views of the surrounding bushland.
The living and sleeping areas are divided by a central terrace, which can be accessed by a ramp. The external timber walls are painted white, although a colourful mural covers one side of the terrace and evokes Le Corbusier's own murals in France.
It looked like nothing else in Australia and at first its architect wasn't even sure if he would stay here. But of course he did, going on to become one of the country's most famous architects, producing curvaceous apartment blocks, many private houses and sophisticated office buildings such as Australia Square.
Rose Seidler House shows us why he was so successful. Its finely detailed interiors demonstrated the power of good design at a time when there were post-war material shortages (which stopped him using more concrete throughout), but the building is also notable for how it addresses the landscape. Large windows draw the outside in and the central terrace means that sunlight penetrates deep into the rooms, as well as forming an outside room itself—an important part of many Australian houses today.
The house was followed by two other dwellings in the same family compound that were equally uncompromising and sophisticated, but there was no attempt to blend them into the landscape, just as his later projects dominate waterfront or bushland settings. His buildings demand attention and naturally that brings detractors. Yet this act of being different somehow also highlights the landscape the buildings sit in.
This was precisely the sort of architectural paradox that had been discussed in Europe and America, and thanks to the Rose Seidler House, Australia joined the conversation.
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