Defining Moments: Penelope Seidler

Penelope Seidler and her husband Harry carried the torch for modernist architecture… And the flame is still burning.

TWAM 18 April 2015

Standing like a dun-coloured sentinel on the north shore of Sydney Harbour, Blues Point Tower is possibly the most pilloried building in Sydney. Penelope Seidler looks at it daily, from the art-filled eyrie of her office and penthouse at Milsons Point, and what she sees is a grand piece of modernist architecture radiating the strength and dynamism of her late husband.

“I know there’s been a lot of discussion about that building but I love it,” says the architect and arts patron. “The thing about architecture is that we all experience it every day, whether we think about it or not. It’s the most relevant of all the arts. No other profession leaves a visual legacy like that.”

When Penelope first met Harry Seidler, the Austrian-born visionary who helped define Sydney’s skyline, he was already working on a scheme for McMahons Point which eventually became the Blues Point Tower apartment block. It was 1957. Penelope Evatt was 19 and doing an arts degree at the University of Sydney, where she was friends with Clive James and Robert Hughes. Her father Clive, a politician and barrister, wanted her to study law as her siblings had – sister Elizabeth would become the first chief justice of the Family Court of Australia – but Penelope was toying idly with the idea of life on the stage. A chance meeting at an architect’s party set her on a path that led to her becoming one of Australia’s most influential arts figures.

“Until I met Harry I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with my life,” she says. “When we got together I decided I needed to know a lot more about architecture. That was his whole life – he was very ambitious and dedicated and I could see I had to be within that orbit. It was his consuming passion and then it became mine.” It may have been the era of homemaker wives, but Penelope was determined to enter her husband’s world on an equal footing. She did an architecture degree and became an important creative collaborator.

“We always worked together,” she says. “Our desks were next to each other and at home too. Harry was the principal designer but he would always show me everything and we’d talk about it.” She was often referred to in those days as “Mrs Harry Seidler”, something she laughs about now. “It didn’t bother me, but it’s a bit old-fashioned isn’t it?”

Together they championed modernism, supporting Jørn Utzon for the Opera House and commissioning works by Le Corbusier, Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella. “Modernism is more than just an aesthetic, it’s about planning for living a good, healthy life,” she says. “After the devastation of the war, the notion of modernism was to create a better world for everybody.”

In 1967, the couple co-designed their award-winning home in the north shore suburb of Killara. The Harry and Penelope Seidler House is a remarkable concrete structure with a split plan over four half-levels hovering out over steep bushland. It’s where the Seidlers brought up their children, Polly and Timothy, and it is hands-down Penelope’s favourite building.

Modernism is more than just an aesthetic, it’s about planning for living a good, healthy life,” she says. At 76, she’s still very engaged; she has been a Biennale of Sydney director since 2010 and sits on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2008 she became a Member of the Order of Australia. These days, she splits her time between three Seidler-designed buildings: the Killara house, the Milsons Point offices of Seidler & Associates, which she has continued to run since her husband’s death in 2006, and the sculptural Cove Apartments in The Rocks.

“I’m all for apartment living,” she says. “When you travel, you usually stay in the city and it’s all very convenient. Why not live like that all the time in your own city?” With more Sydneysiders now embracing this style of living, could it be that Harry’s Blues Point Tower was merely ahead of its time?