Austrian born Australian architect Harry Seidler was greatly influenced by the Bauhaus. He first encountered the ideas of the school under the tutelage of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, who had escaped Germany for the United States in 1934 to take up a position at Harvard School of Design. On Gropius’s suggestion, in the summer of 1946 Seidler travelled to North Carolina to take Josef Albers’ courses on colour and design. Seidler kept detailed notes of these courses, which he brought with him to Australia and often revisited.
Seidler often cited Josef as the most influential figure on his architectural practice. He maintained a close working relationship with the artist throughout his professional career, commissioning a number of Josef’s artworks for major building projects in Australia including Wrestling, a large-scale geometric sculpture for the forecourt of the MLC Centre in Sydney’s Martin Place and a Homage to the Square tapestry for the building’s foyer. Features of Seidler’s architecture, such as the syncopated organisation of windows on the exterior of Blues Point Tower in Sydney’s McMahons Point is often compared to the rhythmic compositions of Josef Albers’ glass sculptures completed at the Bauhaus.
Watch Harry Seidler reflect on Josef’s teachings in the following excerpt from a lecture presented at the National Gallery of Australia in 2002.
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