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Oskar Gerson

@Barbican_City_of_London

Award winning, Australian treasure, Rose Seidler H

Award winning, Australian treasure, Rose Seidler House built by Harry Seidler for his parents (1948-50). An immediate success, today a protected heritage site. Located in Wahroonga, a suburb of Sydney, it was Seidler’s first Australian design. Viennese Jewish by birth & later an Australian citizen (with a Canadian detour) 15-year-old Harry was sent by his parents to England after Anschluss. His studies in Cambridgeshire cut short when war broke out a year later. By now classed as an adult and an ‘enemy alien’ regardless that he was clearly not a threat. Interned on the Isle of Mann & then in Canada, later in life he published his diary about this difficult period of great uncertainty, a combination of words and images which is today housed in the State Library of NSW. There was ultimately a good outcome when he, along with fellow refugees had their status changed to Friendly Alien. He remained in Canada and studied architecture. His Bauhaus encounter came in ‘46 when he was awarded a Harvard scholarship, studying under Gropius and Breuer (who also employed him in New York). Contemporaries included IM Pei & Paul Rudolph. Harry emigrated to Australia to reunite with his parents who had arrived in ‘46 and to accept a commission from his parents to build their first house. Travelling via Brazil, he briefly worked for Niemeyer. ‘Rose Seidler House’ helped put Modernism on the map in Australia.

A founding member of the Australian Architecture Association, designer of Australia Square (with Pier Luigi Nervi) & many other buildings. Seidler was known to be unafraid to share his views on urban planning, his vision of a suburb differed from local councillors. A divider, in his obituary art critic Robert Hughes complained about the ‘Seidlerisation of Sydney’. His buildings, which we would describe as brutalist, were not all appreciated either however how can one not love his Australian Embassy in Paris (together with Breuer) a magnificent brutalist building. Recipient of stellar international awards, Seidler was considered a huge influence.

Read ‘Harry Seidler, the Man Who Shaped Modernism’ on Greyscape.com

Photo with thanks to Anna Lisa Capurro @ms.modernism

Glorious view from a friend’s window. This is Ba

Glorious view from a friend’s window. This is Bastion House. Mr Gove has now suspended (for the moment) the planning process in the teeth of significant, well argued objections. But the battle is nowhere near over.

Greyscape Bastion House and Former Museum of London Photo Competition

We’re looking for your photos of Bastion House and the Former Museum of London and a selection to which we’ll post on our instagram and here. Acclaimed photographer Richard Davis will judge the winning photograph and the photographer will receive two Bastion House mugs

Send your photo to info@greyscape.com by WeTransfer with your name and email, or initially via instagram to @barbican_city_of_london

Deadline extended! All photos to be received by May 31st 2024

Contextualist architecture: Chapel of the Holy Cro

Contextualist architecture: Chapel of the Holy Cross, architects August K. Strotz and Richard Hein in Sedona, Arizona (1954-56) commissioned by local rancher and sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude. Image @modtraveler

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