Designing the modern world

Walter Gropius was the visionary founder of the Bauhaus movement. Harry Seidler trained under him in the United States, subsequently introducing modernist architectural design principles to Australia, to great acclaim.

In Walter Gropius, Harry Seidler found an educator with a shared passion for contemporary design.  Gropius established the Bauhaus school in Germany, which envisioned a union of art and design through active engagement with materials. Following an education that included a pivotal stint under Gropius at the Harvard School of Design, Austrian-born Seidler came to prominence in Australia after designing a modernist home in Sydney for his parents, who had migrated to the city in 1946. Seidler was subsequently commissioned to create a slew of modernist buildings in Sydney and Canberra, winning multiple design and architecture awards in the process. In his portrait of the pair, influential modernist photographer Max Dupain conveys a sense that we are interrupting a conversation, with the striking design of the background panelling hinting at its subject.