Daniel Thomas : Newspaper writings

Pat "TELEGRAPH" 2 6 JAN 1964 Sydney, N.S.W. The Week in Art by Daniel Thomas It's appropriate that Only the most expensive the landscape, and his the glossy new picture- Luxbuurrybs can afford the 1963 house at Port Back - book on Harry Seidler's building acififfehrigittIore'tZ y itnrtinatrhoows the leastdoc- buildings from the past can then be hidden In large buildings.° Aa beititein; gardens and trees. sloping bush site has die - eight years should be As it Is, except for Pad haotuesed a ground-hugging printed in three Ian- dington's ' terraces, our- is sloping am= cities are visually a pathetically with the land. guages, English, French and German, for he is squalidor.l. as anywhere in the 1 ntot,belliTe'gZheth:ffily: it does give a loud, and at the without any doubt Aus- ceiTithis is why Soldier's re - progression from till:1.e a badly needed lee- tralia's most consistent houses to large bu Id gs lure. Lure In modern architec- architect in the main- that one sees dally i IPS° in s le the office block discover thatSeidler ycan ternotional style" arch- Lend Lease House, or the Victoria Tower fiats on the itecture. clifftop at Potts Point) set a conspicuous example of alils style matured In cleanliness and tidiness in Europe In the 20s-a great a ve naughty world. turning point In Western The new book. arry Seidler 1955-1983" (pub- lished b Sydne the 30s, and finally pro- "/15/) lus ra d Zlla peels, arrived In Australia b phase, thoug In 1949 with Harry Seidler's there are still plenty of first house. houses. Besides moving This was at Wahroonga, Into new fields his style and won the &Anion has clearly matured. Medal. Houses like 'Lone recalls with astonishment, provoked their little Dobell cases, were dr a gg ed through the law courts by local councils who wished to forbid them on aesthetic grounds. architecture - was misun- derstood by dilettante architects In Melbourne in stream of modern or "in- welcome, for these build- It will surprise man to be picturesque and infor- mal, and the same people might now force them- selves to agree that the impersonal design he gives to mass housing or to commercial building Is not an imposition of personal taste but a reasoned be- lief in what is appropri- ate. Similar beliefs, when widely held, produced the glories of Georgian Eng- land. The Messing - Nicholson sculpture breach of con- tract last year Indicates that arbitrary and unin- formed artistic censorship of the unfamiliar has not entirely disappeared. But astonishing thing is the sedateness now of that 1949 house by comparison with the rampant eclectic featurtsm of thousands of speculative buildets' "con- temporary" houses today. One of Seldier's points In the brief introduction Is that architecture should not be too varied and cap- ricious. If buildings with- out benefit of architect- which means nearly all buildings-would keep to a few perfected' forms. would use a common gram- mar intelligible to the most illiterate builder. then the .visual chaos of Australia's rat* Would be cliwJahhed. Pure form The earliest buildings as- serted their purity of form in a sculptor's or painter's way; one sensed the draw- ing board behind them more than the structure, The newer work expresses its structure very clearly, even dramatically as In the individual ski lodge at Thredbo with its wooden frame fuUy visible. Though chunky concrete is more usual. When one comes to buildings of necessarily standardised function, such as the Diamond Bay flats on the ocean beyond Vau- cluse, the orderly sim- plicity is the only possible solution for dignified har- mony with the cliff's mas- sive rocky wall: but at the same time it asserts the dignity of the human in- tellect and Its creation of precarious order amid the forces of nature. Single houses, however, being small, can be cus- toni-butlt and made per- 5°"4".'clkelltiAlferOfnaithlti What's on TODAY AND HUY WM( C.,, C.,,iiefy of N.5.1./ Aiehalaid Wynne and Salmon annul 0 1or 1901, Clppn, aatandoit to 0 p.m. on 507'5. '10tOlartIr 1 5.11:!' Hornsby, C 1010ition. ALL NeXT will sol.n.4rni,,2t.Glonmora Paddington, Ptak, OT4offlo, pa,n1. [rangGIlary, tgjotienan Geoff re, Ilooper. OPINING ?MOAT Dominion. 192 Cagextio 5raDiNttsagklyTaisso, paintlogs 19 11100 5 Joy PagyOnifootO ors p. RIGHT: Seidler's Diamond Bay flats . . a rocky perch. BELOW: Port Hacking house... melds with the bush.