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The Forum > Article Comments > Harry Seidler - a man who lived by real values > Comments

Harry Seidler - a man who lived by real values : Comments

By Natasha Cica, published 11/4/2006

Harry Seidler had an untiring belief in the importance of the culture that informed his work, the causes he championed and his crusades against false values.

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Natasha, what part of our culture informed Mr Seidler when he designed that horrible mess known as Blues Point Tower? It resembles an erect male penis so is Harry saying that Sydney is a modern day Sodom or Gomorrah? Did Harry create the Tower as an architectural aridity; a box-like high-rise building that serves to stifle the human spirit?
Posted by Sage, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 11:00:03 AM
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The man should be applauded for his achievements, but at the end of the day he was only an architect. What about the guy who actually developed, envisioned the project and employed him to build it? that is where the real kudos should go.
Posted by Realist, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 1:58:22 PM
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An erect MALE penis, Sage? As opposed to all those female penises? But you'll get no argument from me on Blues Point Tower's aesthetic appeal.

On Seidler's death, I wondered if he would complain to the heavenly courts about the noise emanating from the choir of all the angels and saints, which pre-dated his residence much as Luna Park did on earth.

I'm no more a fan of amusement parks than Seidler was, but the uber-NIMBY was well aware the place existed before he graced it with his proximity. What right did he think he had to whinge about the sounds of plebs at play?
Posted by anomie, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 4:19:53 PM
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Maybe it is a sign:
Nephilim cryptic message. Sodom and Gomorrah: ha
And the end of day? By the Looters perhaps, not the Gods?
sorry I could not resist.
Posted by All-, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 5:01:34 PM
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Mordernism is a blight upon the once fair city of Sydney, now a stack of rusting eye-sores completely detached from our architectural tradition. It speaks of a drap internationalism which renders every single city exactly like the next.

It's no suprise that the most loved cities in the world preserve a tradition of architecture which develops step by step to give character and charm to the place, reaffirming the values of that society in the aestetics and design of the ages, into the ages. The modernist experiment, orginally brought on out of a cultural cringe, should end now, and permit our living architectural history to breathe anew.
Posted by DFXK, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 8:02:43 PM
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While admiring some of Seidler's architecture, and appreciating his single-minded adherence to his own values, I don't believe he is a figure of inspiration for us. He was the Jeff Kennett of Australian architecture, openly contemptuous of anyone who disagreed with him, incapable of accommodating an alternative viewpoint. In that way he is the perfect pin-up boy for the Modernist programme, the ruthless sweeping away of the past to be replaced by a rationalist nirvana.

The failure of Modernist architecture is that it was unable to produce housing that the average punter wanted to live in, at a price they could afford. Perhaps the closest it came was the work of Ancher, Mortlock, Murray and Woolley for Pettit & Sevitt. But these houses were only a tiny proportion of the housing stock and their preservation is becoming increasingly problematic.

Since then architecture has moved on, environmental controls will reshape Australian architecture in a way that Modernism never did. The undoubted ugliness of some Australian suburbs will not be cured by Modernism, it is a dead end. The McMansion is popular because it is cheap and it provides the space for all those shiny consumer goods. I don't want to live in one, but I'll leave it for the taste police to arrest people for "false values".

Harry Seidler was a shameless self-publicist, an elitist, a successful businessman, who worked for big corporations or government departments. I find it hilarious that such a man could see himself as a rebel "on the barricades", while going to the opera or hobnobbing with the rich and powerful. The smell of hipocrisy is almost overwhelming.
Posted by Johnj, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 11:25:09 PM
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