Harry Seidler: Architecture, Art, and Collaborative Design

The exhibition is currently on view at the AIA Center in Houston, Texas. 

Next stops:

Black Mountain College Museum in North Carolina — June 14-September 7, 2013

University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada — September 12-October 2013

Museum of Sydney in Sydney, Australia — November 1, 2014-March 7, 2015

Planungswerkstatt in Vienna, Austria — March-April 2015

Curated by Vladimir Belogolovsky of Intercontinental Curatorial Project in New York with Penelope Seidler and Harry Seidler & Associates in Sydney, Seidler's prolific body of work includes architectural models, photographs, films, scrapbooks, sculpture maquettes, and original sketches, provided by the architect's family, Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, The Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, The Marcel Breuer Digital Archive at Syracuse University, and the private architves of artists Norman Carlberg, Charles Perry, and Lin Utzon.

Says Belogolovsky, "I would draw attention to two reasons why Seidler is important and why he will always be important. First, it is his love for architecture, his position on following his convictions to which he was always true and a mission to make the world a better place where architecture is a big part of it. He was a real crusader and not just for hs own work but for what he believed—whether voicing his support for Jorn Utzon's Opera House in Sydney or protesting against unfitting addition to marcel Breuer's Whitney Museum in New York by Michael Graves. And second, I think it really important, particularly today when s many architects are entrenched with their ambitions compromised and scaled down. It is the importance of inspiration. Seidler's vision was grand and he drew his inspiration from a multitude of sources—art, geometry, history, and so on. I would particularly stress the improatnt of art as an endless source of creative inspiration for architecture."

A book detailing his work is also set to hit stores in February 2014, with design by Massimo Vignelli and published by Rizzoli.

"As much as the needs of fact, the needs of the spirit and the senses, must be satisfied. Architecture is as much a part of the realm of art as it is of technology; the fusion of thinking and feeling." —Harry Seidler, 1963