The Last Bauhaus Student
Harry Seidler studied under the Bauhaus teachers Walter Gropius, Josef Albers, and Marcel Breuer, even after the Bauhaus closed
By Ralph Morse LIFE Photo Collection
Just think of everything we’ve missed just because we came into the world too late! We never saw the Beatles live ...
Klum, Heidi (2000) by Marion Curtis LIFE Photo Collection
... never flew in Concorde ...
Bauhaus building by night (1928/1929) by Edmund Collein Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
... and could never study at the Bauhaus either.
No point in whining, we can’t turn back time. But – some people manage to find a way back to the future even without a time machine.
Like Harry Seidler from Vienna for instance.
The son of a Jewish textile factory owner, he was only ten when the Bauhaus in Germany was closed down. But he got to study with Gropius & Co. anyway.
The masters of the Bauhaus (after 1926) by unknown Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
After 1933 many of the former Bauhaus people left Germany. Some made their way to America, where they taught at universities and started up architectural firms.
The young Seidler, who because of the war found himself in England and then in Canada, where he studied architecture, trotted along in the footsteps of three of them, one after another.
Walter Gropius and Harry Seidler (cropped image) (1954) by Max Dupain Original Source: Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Canberra Purchased with funds provided by Timothy Fairfax AC 2003
In 1945 Harry Seidler went to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the USA where he was a master student with Walter Gropius (Bauhaus founder and its boss until 1928) at Harvard.
Light Grey Wall (1958) by Josef Albers Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
In 1946 he studied Design with Josef Albers (he had taught the legendary Bauhaus preliminary course) at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina.
Marcel Breuer (1950-08-08) by Walter Sanders LIFE Photo Collection
For a short time, he even worked for Marcel Breuer (he invented the cool tubular steel furniture at the Bauhaus) in New York.
In June 1948, short of his 25th birthday, Seidler moved to Sydney, where his parents had made their home in the meantime, and for them built his first house – a feast for the eyes à la Bauhaus.
And so he brought the Bauhaus Down Under– and the Australians were thrilled. The young architect won a prize for his house, and plenty of commissions followed. Seidler’s career took off.
By the time the Australia Square Tower, at the time the world’s tallest light concrete building, was opened in 1967, Harry Seidler’s reputation was international.
„Good design doesn't date,“ that was his motto and architecture: “is not an inspirational business, it's a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things that's all.“
Later on, Seidler even built in his home city of Vienna – the Neue Donau high rise and the Neue Donau housing estate – and so brought a bit of Bauhaus back to Europe, after a little detour right around the world.
Text / Concept / Realisation: Cornelia Jeske
Editing: Astrid Alexander, Cornelia Jeske
Translation: Catherine Hales, Stephan Schmidt
© Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau
www.bauhaus-dessau.de
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