Stewart Calder in association with Marsh & Michaelson, Glenferrie Sports Stand1937

image D. Evans

Life in Australia during the 1920's and 1930's was marked by economic turmoil and a generally conservative outlook. An attitude of both dependence and subservience towards England as the 'mother country' predominated. By the end of this period both Sydney and Melbourne had populations in excess of one million and between them they contained about a third of the nations total population. The personal motor car and air travel became increasingly common as did entertainment using the media of cinema, radio and phonograph. In contrast to the general orientation towards England much of the popular entertainment stemmed from North America. In architecture and design however the trend was away from the historicism of the preceding decades towards ways of representing modernity. Now as before Australian architects and designers drew their inspiration either from Europe or from North America which was itself transforming European models. The two ways of 'being modern' which this unit deals with can be allocated the titles modernism, at this time a solely European impulse, and Art-Deco which co-existed in both Europe and North America but increasingly as time passed became a North American design trend. In contrast to the trend towards the future represented by this dual attempt to represent 'the modern' the official designation of excellent architecture as reflected in the awards for the Street Architecture Medal of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architecture was still decidedly historicizing. The conservative nature of the architecture which won the award consistently from its inception in 1929 perhaps until its final presentation in 1941 totally ignores the architectural product of what Boyd called the revolution of 1934 - the year in which Seabrook and Fildes' design for the Sir MacPherson Robertson Girl's High School was built in a rigorous north European brick modernist idiom.

In a strict sense the term Art Deco should only apply to the French decorative arts between the first decade of the century and the late 1920's. It's highpoint coincided with the staging of the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris between April and October 1925. It is generally regarded as an extension of the sinuous Art Nouveau of the late nineteenth century and has been described as the last truly sumptuous style. Despite its French origins French, and indeed European Art Deco was not extensive.

However the exhibition made a considerable impact on the many American architects who visited it. This was particularly so because of the strong links between architectural education in the U. S. A. and the French Beaux Arts model of architectural education. A demonstrable French pedigree enhanced the legitimacy of the decorative motifs which the American architects took up with alacrity.

The American Art Deco went through two phases. The first, in the 1920's , was a geometrical and angular phase [see for example the decorative motifs of the Chrysler building by William Van Alen (1928-30) The second in the 1930's was somewhat more curvilinear and streamlined. See for example the Trumold Tyre building, by P. B. Hudson & J. H. Wardrop [1938], in Queens Parade, Clifton Hill.

By the late 1920's the style had been almost universally embraced by commercially successful American architects. In the rich and diverse commercial architecture of the time could be found traces of the contemporary German and Dutch Expressionist architecture, the Viennese Sezession and even the avant-garde movies of the time.

By the mid 1930's the angular decorative style of the 1920's had been almost completely replaced by the streamlined Deco of the 1930's particularly in the United States. This reflected an increasing acceptance of European modernism with its fetishization of the machine, and the assumptions of speed precision and efficiency which accompanied it. The drawings of the successful German architect Erich Mendelsohn widely reproduced and admired in America were thought to have exerted an influence as was the rise of the professional Industrial designer in the United States with figures such as Norman Bel Geddes [3. NORMAN BEL-GEDDES] and Raymond Loewy rising to prominence. In architecture the famous housing block by the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud (1924-27) at the Hoek van Holland and the Johnson Wax Building at Racine Wisconsin (1936-39) by the master Frank Lloyd Wright bore testimony to the power of the idea. The streamlined styling of all means of transportation became the dominant metaphor for progress in both Europe and America and it readily spilled over into static works of architecture and industrial design so that everything from buildings to toasters, slide projectors and anonymous pieces of electrical equipment seemed ready to speed off down the freeways or airways at the drop of a checkered flag. Art Deco swept the New World and the Late Colonial world in the 1920's and 1930's. In west Java, particularly the city of Bandung there was a brief but vigorous flowering of the style during the 1930's fostered by a small group of Dutrch trained architects.

The influence of the Art Deco was brought to Australia by immigrant architects, by the burgeoning popular media and entertainment industries and by Australian architects who, having travelled abroad returned home and put into practice what they had learned on their travels.

One of the most prominent of those Australian architects to travel and bring back the Deco Style was the Melbourne architect Harry Norris who in 1929 was sent to the U.S.A. by his client G. J. Coles to study retail design before he designed the Bourke Street Coles store. In fact Norris travelled overseas annually between 1928 and 1941 working for a time in America and his work always showed a strong awareness of trends in American architecture.

Among Norris' major buildings were Burnham Beeches a luxurious country residence designed for the family of the pharmaceutical millionaire Sir Alfred Nicholas (1933) and Mitchell House (1937) a streamlined office block which drew some inspiration from the work of the German architect Erich Mendelsohn.

Another important Melbourne architect who worked in an assured commercial Deco style was Marcus Barlow who produced in 1932 the Manchester Unity Building in admittedly a commercial Gothic style highly reminiscent of Howell's and Hood's competition winning design for the Chicago Tribune Building from 1925 but much of whose detailing was pure Deco the distinguished Century Building from 1940 and Jensen House in Swanston Street from 1941-7.

In 1933 the brothers H. W. & F. B. Tompkins who we first met in the last decade of the nineteenth century producing the red brick romanesque commercial buildings which still characterize the Flinders Lane - Flinders Street end of the CBD designed the Myer Emporium [21-22 MYERS] and in 1934 Bates Smart & McCutcheon designed the geometric Deco facade of the Buckley and Nunn building next door to Myers in Bourke Street. [23 BUCKLEY & NUNN]

In Collins Street the remodelling in 1933 of Newspaper House at 247-49 Collins Street by Stephenson and Meldrum, about whom more later, is today chiefly notable for its wonderful Napier - Waller mosaic with prominently featured streamlined planes, trains and automobiles.

Almost opposite Newspaper House in Collins Street is the former Kodak House 1934-35 by Oakley and Parkes.

Two fine Deco buildings from this period by Hudson &. Wardrop are the former United Kingdom Hotel [now the Clifton Hill McDonalds] (1938) a streamlined-deco building with thoroughly geometric deco ornament and Alkira House in William Street (1937) a small reinforced concrete office block faced in black glazed ceramic cladding panels organized into an intricate geometric-deco elevation treatment.

Other Deco building worth noting include the Keable building by the former Burley-Griffin apprentice Edward Billson from 1938, the showroom and offices at 111 - 125 A'Beckett Street (1936) by Lionel San Miguel, and the Williamstown Beach Dressing Pavillion by Bridge & Bogle (1935).

Finally mention should be made of the McPherson's Building by Stewart Calder with Reid and Parsons (1935) the most elegant streamlined Deco facade in Melbourne and the only one in my opinion, of a quality sufficient to actually support the frequently invoked comparison with Erich Mendelsohn.

As with Art Deco the arrival of modernist architecture in Australia had arguably three root causes.

1. Australian architects travelling abroad, either to study and/or work - these were difficult times in Australia and work was scarce. A small but significant core of Australian architects travelled to Europe and north America to experience first hand the exciting new work they saw in the journals and returned to design and execute work in the new idioms. Foremost among these were Leighton Irwin, Percy Everett, Norman Seabrook, Arthur Stephenson and in Sydney, Sydney Ancher

2. Equally the local architectural culture was enriched by a small number of significant foreign trained immigrant architects. Foremost among these were Frederick Romberg in Melbourne and Harry Seidler in Sydney.

3. Finally we could note the arrival on the scene of a couple of new journals which dealt with the fresh international impulses.

In June 1930 Leighton Irwin, for the previous two years head of the Architectural Atelier at Melbourne University and who was to become president of the RVIA in 1931, gave a talk to the members on a recent world tour which dealt with the new architecture he found in Europe and the United States. Leighton Irwin had been a soldier in the first world war who studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London after 1918. Returning to Melbourne to practice he headed the Architectural Atelier [later to become the architecture school we know today] at Melbourne University in 1928. He returned from his 1930 trip a convinced modernist

His talk was divided up under the headings Scale - everything in the USA is so big; for example the Hoover Dam, Uniformity - the impact of mass production on modern life, mass produced Fords as a shining example of the excellence and economy which can be achieved via mass production, Speed - Americans work faster than Australians and everyone works harder, Standardization - the impact of mass production on modern life and a sort of Taylorist fascination with rationalization and quantification as a means to increased efficiency, Restrictions - why do we creative people have to put up with them?, Materials - steel, concrete and glass, but also apparently the brick and terra cotta of Amsterdam, The Mechanical Aids - elevators, electrical services and HVAC Concentration - Cities everywhere else seem to be denser than Melbourne, Transport - The demands placed on transportation systems by what he termed Concentration and General Tendencies - All of the above lead to an architecture of simplicity and directness, a simplicity of plan and mass. Colour used in simple form in large areas . . . the interiors have a simple directness, and the furniture in them is of the most easily cleaned type, often being made of just steel rods with upholstery placed where needed . . .

In this list of headings we can recognize the major themes underpinning the modern movement.

Irwin was plainly impressed with, but somewhat perplexed by. the United States, dismissive of England as impoverished and degenerate, and greatly impressed by Weimar Germany.

He cannot have encountered much modernist architecture elsewhere than in Germany for the exodus of the leading German modernist architects which made modernism into a global architectural movement had not yet begun.

The list of slides of buildings with which he accompanied his talk is not given but in Germany he certainly saw Erich Mendelsohn's famous Berlin Department store Schocken which he admired, and he appears to have visited some of the German seidlung housing developments. At that time in Berlin seidlung Britz featuring the work of Bruno Taut & Martin Wagner and and the quaintly named seidlung "Uncle Tom's Cabin" featuring designs by Taut, Mendelsohn, Neutra and Hilbersheimer, not to mention Tessenow, both in the Berlin suburbs were new developments and the Dessau Bauhaus with Gropius at its head was only four years old. He may well have visited the seidlung Weissenhof housing exhibition which opened in Stuttgart in 1927. In fact it is almost inconceivable that an architect visiting Germany at this time with a brief to search out new developments in contemporary architecture and with an obvious sympathy for the modernist agenda would not have done so.[44 WEISSENHOF, 45 DESSAU BAUHAUS, 46 SIEDLUNGBRITZ ]

There is no evidence of who was present at this lecture and it is evident from the tone of the comments by the proposer and seconder of the vote of thanks for the lecture [Mr R. B. Hamilton and Mr W. O. McCutcheon] that they at least were somewhat qualified in their excitement over the new architecture they had just been exposed to.

. . . I am afraid that I am sufficiently old fashioned or conservative to want just to adhere to tradition a little longer, even if we evolve something in the way of modifying the traditional forms without bolting away too quickly from them and using these downright "battleship" types which we have seen on the screen tonight . . .

Nevertheless the example serves to demonstrate at least some degree of awareness in Melbourne of the new architecture which was then appearing in central Europe as it happened. The lecture certainly seems to mark, whether coincidentally or not, the arrival of modernist architecture in Melbourne as within the next decade a significant number of fine buildings were to be designed and constructed in one or another of the then prevailing modernist architectural idioms.

1934 seems to have been the watershed year. A Centenary House Design Competition was held which revealed considerable interest in the new modernist idiom. Later in 'Victoria Modern' Boyd was to describe the occurences of this year as the Revolution of 1934 and pronounce that 'after this year no modern project would ever be lonely again' Although individual projects had been executed prior to this year, it was in 1934 that Norman Seabrook's competition winning design for the Mac Pherson Robertson Girls High School in South Melbourne was constructed.

This design which made Seabrook's reputation as a designer showed the unmistakeable influence of the important Dutch modernist architect Willem Dudok who Ancher was to discover some years later in Hilvershum. Bryce Raworth [1996 : 22] comments that Seabrook had the opportunity of visiting the continent while working in England, and may have seen Dudok's buildings first hand, but in England he had ample opportunity to see their interpretation by British architects. Further, Raworth notes that Seabrook's London employers Burnett, Tait & Lorne designed the Curzon Cinema closely modelled on Dudok's Hilvershum Town Hall and that the documentation was probably carried out while Seabrook was in their employ. In itself this may be enough to explain the influence of Dudok on Seabrook's own work. To me it seems that there was at the time several European architects whose work reflected similar concerns. The Book Printer's Building by Max Taut [1924-25] is one good example. In general there has been a rather too frequent tendency to compare Melbourne Modernist buildings of the period with Dudok's masterpiece. The Heidelberg Town Hall for example is often compared with Hilvershum - this seems to me to be a rather long bow to draw.

Raworth also notes the presence on the competition jury of two confirmed modernists Percy Oakley and W. O. [Osborne] McCutcheon. Oakley's firm Oakley and Parkes had recently completed the small Moderne [rather than modernist] Yule House in Little Collins Street (1932) but as the firm's oeuvre also includes the throughly historicist Equity Trustees Building in Bourke Street and the Deco Kodak House [1934-35] which we have just seen, it might be stretching a point to describe Oakley as a confirmed modernist.

It is hard to imagine the impact the MacRobertson Girls High School design had in the mid 1930's as an avant-garde expression and icon, an uncompromisingly modern statement. The choice of Seabrook's design seems to have been well received by a profession already shifting towards a general acceptance of the modernist aesthetic. Indeed it was not even the city's first modernist building having been preceded, as we have seen by Oakley & Parkes' Yule House [1932] and one or two houses by Mewton & Grounds. [53 STOOKE HOUSE] The decade from 1932 - 1942 produced a rash of modernist buildings in Melbourne and while the high profile of the MacRobertson Girls High School scheme undoubtedly furthered the modernist cause, making it easier for later schemes to get built it is probably more accurate to see this project as part of a larger shift towards acceptance of a modernist architecture which was already underway than as the cause of the shift.

Despite a long and successful professional career the buildings of Seabrook's first decade in practice are generally regarded as his most significant and his first in his own right, MacRobertson Girl's High School, is almost certainly his best.

Another prolific but relatively unknown architect whose overseas study tours in 1912 and 1930 strongly influenced his architectural output was Percy Everett. As chief architect of the Public Works Department during the 1930's 40's and early 50's Everett introduced the modern style into the schools, hospitals, police stations, state offices and technical schools of Victoria.

Born in Geelong in 1888 Everett was the first architectural graduate of the Gordon Technical College [now Deakin University] in 1907. In 1934 he became the Chief Architect of the PWD. Politically adept as well as a talented designer he apparently personally received 'carte blanche' for his designs from the then Minister for Public Works, Sir John Harris. He set up a separate design office in Russell Street, removed from the bureaucrats and documenting teams at Treasury Place. He paid higher wages to attract better staff and aimed to create an office as modern as his closest commercial rival Stephenson & Meldrum, of whom more later.

Everett was an eclectic who employed the full range of 20th century idioms in his architecture and this pluralism caused his work to fall out of favour with later more doctrinaire modernists. Box Hill Girl's High School (1937), the Essendon Technical College (1938) and the Camberwell Police Station (1938) are in a style close to European mainstream modernism. The tower of the Caulfield Institute of Technology (1947) borrows from the Rusian Constructivists and his various additions to the State Government offices, notably 41 St Andrews Place East Melbourne (1948) and 2A Treasury Place (1949) are in a severe slightly classicized modernist style somewhat reminiscent of Peter Behrens. Of the many other extant builings produced by the Public Works under Percy Everett RMIT Building 9, its sister building in the Collingwood Technical College campus and the unusual William Angliss School of Painting and Decorating are of interest because they demonstrate both the high standard of design and the eclecticism of this body of work.

The next of the architects with significant international experience to influence the establishment of modernist architecture in Australia was Arthur Stephenson. Stephenson was born to a upper middle class family in 1890 in Melbourne on the verge of the Great Depression. His father was a classics scholar, a grammar school principal and later a Congregational minister. In 1900 Stephenson commenced study at Melbourne Grammar, training ground of Melbourne's elite, where he made a number of long lasting powerful friends, not least among these was Clive Baillieu of the politically and financially powerful Baillieu family . After his secondary education he studied part time towards his eventual qualification as an architect at the Working Men's College [now RMIT] while working for the builder Swansson Brothers. War and work slowed his academic progress and it was not until 1920 at the age of 30 that he eventually qualified ARIBA in London at the Architectural Association.

Whilst in London during his war service Stephenson met the architects Percy Meldrum and Donald Turner who were later to become his partners. Meldrum was an instructor at the Architectural Association School where both Stephenson and Turner had enrolled to take the necessary courses leading to the RIBA examintions. Having finally achieved the necessary academic qualifications Stephenson was enouraged to return home by Sir William McBeath the chairman of the State Savings Bank of Victoria with promises of commissions and most important of all by promises of help from W. L. Baillieu, the extremely wealthy and powerful father of his former school friend. Stephenson's financial success was assured.

After commencing practice in Melbourne in 1920 in partnership with Percy Meldrum Stephenson's impressive contacts resulted instantly in a string of important commissions, buildings for the Baillieus, offices for the State Savings Bank, a new members stand for the Melbourne Cricket Ground, renovations for the Town Hall and a new Stock Exchange. By 1930 Stephenson and Meldrum was the town's largest architectural practice. Stephenson reformed several aspects of conventional practice, he re-modelled the fee structure to remove the financial obligation of the architect to the builder as a result of one percent of fees due coming from the builder, henceforth all fee payments were from the client. Stephenson & Meldrum were the first office to introduce internal office accounting thus making their estimates more competitive and job control tighter and they were the first office to establish an in house technical library subscribing to all foreign journals and run by a full time librarian. This was a thoroughly modern practice in all senses of the word.

In 1925/6 the firm completed three small hospital commissions, Stephenson decided to specialize in hospital work and undertook a three month study tour of modern hospitals in the United States. Hospital design was to become the core of his practice for the rest of his life. Although his firm undertook many large commercial and industrial commissions. Hospital design became and remained Stephenson's passion and he designed many fine ones.

In Melbourne Stephenson & Meldrum designed St Vincent's Hopital (1933), The Mercy Hospital in East Melbourne (1934), and The Freemason's Hospital East Melbourne (1936).the Australian Pavillions for the New York World Fair and the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, both in 1939; The Royal Bank Chambers for the E. S. & A. Bank in Collins Street Melbourne (1939). Stephenson and Turner designed The Royal Melbourne Hospital (ca 1942), and the Royal Children's Hopital (1963), all of them models of efficiency in an assured commercial blend of streamlined deco and Scandinavian Brick modernism. The practice established a Sydney office under Donald Turner and it was responsible for Gloucester House at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (1936), [63 GLOUCESTER HOUSE, 64 UNITED DENTAL HOSPITAL] The United Dental Hospital (1940), the King George the Fifth Memorial Wing at the Royal Prince Alfred (1941) and the outstanding Yaralla Military Hopital at Concord (1942), the Sydney Headquarters of Australian Consolidated Industries (1941) and many other buildings.

Perhaps the most significant immigrant architect to influence the arrival of modernist architecture in Melbourne was Frederick Romberg. During the 1930's Romberg studied law as his father had done at Munich university. He came into conflict with the Nazis, fled to Switzerland where he studied architecture at the Federal Technical Institute in Zurich. Here he came into contact with the contemporary modernism of Corbusier and Gropius. He apparently disliked the modernist expressionism of Erich Mendelsohn which he felt to be oppressive but aligned himself rather with the Swiss modernists with whom he was surrounded particularly Otto Salvisberg, his professor. Arriving in Australia on a travelling scholarship in 1938 he quickly found his feet and his first independent building was the Newburn flats in Queens Road South Melbourne from 1939 - 1941. [65-66 NEWBURN, 67-68 STANHILL] Rather like Grounds who he formed an important partnership with Romberg was something of an eclectic and his modernism learned in Switzerland once removed from the creative hot spot lacked the zeal [some would say rigour] of Gropius and Mies. Romberg's best known building the Stanhill flats and offices were criticized at the time, quite unjustly in my opinion for their excessive fussiness and visual complexity.

Before moving to a brief discussion of the arrival of modernism in Sydney a list of some of the most significant Melbourne modernist buildings to appear during the decade following Oakley & Parkes' Yule House in 1932 seems appropriate.

The list of significant modernist buildings to appear during these years in Melbourne includes:

1. Yule House in Little Collins Street by Oakley & Parkes (1932)

2. Critchley Parker House in Upper Beaconsfield by Mewton & Grounds (1933)

3. Stooke House in Halifax Street Brighton by Mewton & Grounds (1933) - [demolished]

4. The Mercy Hospital in East Melbourne by Stephenson & Meldrum (1934)

5. The Sanitarium Health Foods Company at Warburton by E. F. Billson, a former employee of W. B. Griffin, (1936)

6. The Freemason's Hospital in East Melbourne by Stephenson & Meldrum (1936)

7. Prince Henry's Hospital in St Kilda Road designed between 1936 - 40 by Leighton Irwin - [demolished 1994]

8. Fire Station and Flats 24 Blyth Street Brunswick by Seabrook and Fildes (1937)

9. The Evan Price House 2 Riverview Rd Essendon by Geoffrey Mewton (1936)

10. The Heidelberg Town Hall by A. C. Leith in association with Peck & Kempter (1937)

11. The Missions to Seamen Building corner Beach Road and Swallow Street Port Melbourne by Harry Norris (1937) - [demolished]

12. Glenferrie Sports Ground Grandstand by S. P. Calder in association with Marsh & Michaelson (1938)

13. Essendon Technical School by the Public Works Department under Percy Everett (1938 - 39)

14. Windsor Fire Station and Flats by Seabrook and Fildes, Albert Street Windsor (1939) - [demolished 1995]

15. Newburn Flats, Queens Road South Melbourne by Romberg & Shaw (1939)

16. Stanhill, Queens Road South Melbourne by F. Romberg designed 1942, executed 1948 - 50.

Other modernist buildings by Seabrook & Fildes of interest.include:

Seabrook's own house in Torrington Street Hawthorn (1935)

Bank of N.S.W., 360 Collins Street, in association with Godfrey & Spowers (1936) - [demolished]

Warracknabeal Town Hall, Warracknabeal (1936)

Bank of N.S.W., 91 William Street Melbourne (1937) - [demolished]

Camberwell Fire Station, Camberwell Road Camberwell (1938)

Flats at 473 St Kilda Street Elwood (1938)

Modernist architecture seems to have arrive more or less concurrently in both Sydney and Melbourne and the early protagonists of the new architecture included Melbourne born and trained Arthur Baldwinson most of whose work was done in Sydney and Arthur Stephenson who established a Sydney office of Stephenson and Turner run by Donald Turner. Despite the early fine examples of Wyldefel gardens at Potts Point by John Brogan (1934 - 5), the Hastings Deering Building by Samuel Lipson in East Sydney, the Royal Exchange Assurance building by Seabrook & Fildes (1936 - 8) a very handsome house at Bayview by the architect W. Watson Sharp (1940) and the Arthur Stephenson buildings listed above little else seems to have developed until after World War.

The young architect Sidney Ancher won a travelling sholarship in 1930, aged 26. He travelled to London where he worked for five years travelling intermittently on the continent.

While working in London he shifted his architectural position from the orthodox conservatism acquired during his training at Sydney Technical College to a fairly pure form of modernism. During his first sojourn in London he travelled on the continent encountering, according to David Saunders the work of Mies van der Rohe and le Corbusier at the 1931 Berlin Bau Austellung [Building Exhibition]. He pronounced himself completely bowled over by his encounter with Mies, insisting that he had never heard of him before. On further travels he encountered and was impressed by, the work of Willem Dudok the city architect of Hilvershum in Holland. He was surprised at the evident influence of Frank Lloyd Wright on Dudok and other northern European architects.

Returning to Sydney in 1936 he rejected an offer to join Stephenson & Turner's Sydney office to commence practice in partnership with R. A. Prevost in 1936. While working with Prevost, Ancher won an internal competition held within the office for the design of a new house for Prevost. This very accomplished project completed in 1937 in an exemplary European modernist style still stands in the the eastern Sydney suburb of Bayview. By 1939 he had returned to London and didn't recommence practice in Sydney until 1945.

After returning in 1945 Ancher remained a sole practitioner for a number of years, designing and having constructed between roughly 1947 and 1951a number of houses which established his reputation [with the help of Robin Boyd ] among the nation's pre-eminent modernists. The Farley House at North Curl Curl (1947), the subject of a famous law case, the Spencer English House in Killeaton Street St Ives (1949), the Hamill House at 4 Maytone Avenue Killara (1949), the Ancher House at 2 Maytone Avenue Killara (1951) are amongt the best known.

In 1948 the most significant Sydney immigrant from the point of view of the growth of modernism in Australia, and perhaps Australia's pre-eminent modernist architect, Harry Seidler arrived in Sydney from the U.S.A.

Harry Seidler was born in 1923, the son of an upper middle class Viennese family. In 1938 the family moved to England. Seidler attended a building crafts course at Cambidgeshire Technical College. In 1940 he was interned and after being moved between various camps in England and the Isle of Man he was shippeds to Canada.

In October 1941 he was released to begin his architectural studies at the University of Manitoba. he graduated with honours in 1944 and in 1945 received a scholarship to the Harvard graduate School of Design [GSD]. where he encountered Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer who had coaxed the GSD into existence. After graduating from the GSD in 1945 Seidler worked for Marcel Breuer in New York during 1946 & 1947. In March 1948 he left Breuer and went on a sort of working holiday working in the office of Oscar Neimeyer in Rio de Janeiro.

His parents had been pressing him to join them in Australia and, with the prospect of commissions from their friends he travelled on to Australia arriving in Sydney in September 1948. Between 1948 and 1952 he completed ten buildings and designed a number of projects, some of which were eventually constructed.

All of them reflect the influence of Harvard and Breuer and the designs both built and unbuilt exerted a profound effect on architecture in Australia.

Seidler's experience with the teaching and personnel of the Bauhaus was not unique in Australian architecture, Ludwig Hirschfeld - Mack had studied at the Bauhaus under Albers and Lyonel Feininger. During the 1930's he emigrated to Australia and taught for many years at Geelong Grammar School but was primarily interested in graphic design. Arthur Baldwinson had worked in England for Maxwell Fry and Walter Gropius but only Seidler was both educated in the system and had worked for the architects.

One of the most significant projects of this prolific period in Seidler's professional life was the Rose Seidler house at Turramurra (1947 - 50). In plan form it is identical with and in elevation treatment similar to, an earlier house which he had produced at Foxboro in Massachusetts prior to immigrating to Australia. nevertheless it is a masterly assured piece of work. Other houses [the early projects were nearly all houses] of note were the Rose House at Turramurra (1949 - 54), the Waks House at Northbridge (1949 - 50), the Williamson House at Mosman (1950) and the Sussman House at Kurrajong Heights (1950 - 51).

At about this time the energy was seen to be waning from the modern movement internationally and a regionalist debate was emerging in the international architectural press. As a way of prefacing a later lecture on the regional development of the modern movement during the 50's, 60's and 70's I would like to end with a rather unpleasant condescending quote from an article in the Architect's Journal, an english publication at the time which attempted to locate Seidler's Sussman house in the context of this debate.

"Bearing in mind this prevalent desire for the evolution of a national style, one is tempted to ask what type of building now receives official blessing? Such a building is . . . a house in Turramurra, New South Wales, designed by Harry Seidler, who . . . has just won the John Sulman Medal, one of Australia's most important architectural prizes. Is it typical of Australia's idea of a truly national architecture? It is unlikely that even architects down under could answer that question yet. It will be interesting to see whether something really indigenous grows up as a result of shortage of materials in a country that has always had to build quicker than it thinks."

The third architectural expression of modernity which took root in Melbourne and, to a lesser extent Sydney, during the 1940's has been described as Regional Modernism. Contemporary architecture in Melbourne durting the 1940's was influenced strongly by developments in North Western Europe at the time - the so-called 'Scandinavian Empiricism' - and the United States with the woody west coast regionalism of the early [mostly domestic] work of Pietro Belluschi and others in Portland Oregon and the similar 'Bay Region Style' of William Wurster and others operating in and around San Francisco. In Melbourne the main exponent of this new approach to modernism was Roy Grounds who, on his second trip abroad had worked as a set designer fopr a film studio in Los Angeles where he had come into contact with Wurster.

blah blah blah blah - to be continued