Sydney Life

The optimistic architect, on any other day, would see every glass half empty as half full. Not today. Today Australia mourns the loss of one of its most prolific architects, Harry Seidler, who died yesterday morning here in Sydney aged 82, following a stroke last year. An architect loved by architects the world over, Seidler leaves an indelible legacy. He was misunderstood (hated?) by much of mainstream Australia, and perhaps herein lays the true sadness of his passing…

Walter Gropius, Oscar Niemeyer, Josef Albers, Marcel Breuer… these names for me, at best, are names in textbooks, names that will appear throughout my course at Sydney Uni. But to Harry Seidler these names were people, faces, friends, colleagues and teachers. Dynasties are big in architecture, or so it seems, and Seidler is right there in the thick of some of the most influential. Not only did he work with and learn from these demi-gods of modern architecture, Seidler exerted his own influence to the point that he can be counted amongst those names; and yet his country for the most part fails to recognise his originality and contribution to Australia and the world.

So what can one do? How do we make a country more informed about Desperate Housewives than RU486 recognise the loss? Do we tell a friend that Harry Seidler died? Do we congregate outside Seidler’s Australia Square and cry? Do we walk around with R.I.P. H.S. penned on our shirts? I, for one, will do my part. But one is not enough. Despite Seidler’s death, the greater loss will be if we do nothing, if we let his work fade as pictures in a textbook and nothing more. Here is an Australian architect unparalleled in the scope and significance of his work, and here lies an opportunity to recognise him for what he was, and not what he was perceived to be. Harry Seidler was, and always will be, a great architect, a challenging innovator and an original Australian. For his contribution we should all be grateful and be proud.

It’s not an Aussie thing to mourn tall poppies, nor is it in our tradition to fly flags half-mast for architects; a thing it seems reserved for those with money or with power, or with both. If not with flagpoles then with glasses, I say. The optimist, on any other day, would see every glass half empty as half full; but on the death of Harry Seidler, let us see that every glass half full is truly empty, just today. R.I.P. H.S.