Located in the suburb of Wahroonga on the Upper North Shore of Sydney, Australia, this Mid-Century Modern house was completed in 1972 by Harry Seilder & Associates. Gissing House was lived in by its original owners – the couple that commissioned it – until 2008 and thus has retained many of its original features and character. It was designed to be a smaller version of Seilder’s own house, Killara House, and consequently has the same split-level arrangement with two adjacent floors separated by a void that accommodates the connecting half-stair. This makes for intimate and defined spaces in what is essentially an open layout. The interior is particularly notable for its variety of surfaces; white Boral concrete block walls, black masonry fireplaces, bréton brut details, and timber ceilings. The house is situated in the middle of a plot landscaped specially for the house at time of completion by Bruce Mackenzie, with terraces and a swimming pool. It has five bedrooms and three bathrooms over a total internal living area of 291 square metres and split over three levels. It is being considered for New South Wales State Heritage listing.

Harry Seidler is arguably one of Australia’s most internationally recognised iconic architect and was awarded Australia’s top architectural prize, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) Gold Medal in 1976 and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Gold Medal in 1996. He was born in Vienna in 1923 and his background and training are unlike that of other local Australian-educated architects and is very much in the tradition of the International Style, with a continuing clear commitment to concrete. He studied at the Wasagymnasium in Vienna from 1933-38 and escaped to England six months after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938. He went to Cambridge Technical College in England, but was interned on the Isle of Man in 1940 and later transported to an internment camp in Canada. Released in 1941, he studied architecture at the University of Manitoba in Canada.

 Seilder then won a scholarship to Harvard School of Design, studying under two of the 20th century’s most iconic architects – Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. He received his Master of Architecture from Harvard in 1946 before undertaking a design course with the artist Joseph Albers.

 During this period, he was also fortunate enough to work with more of the architectural profession’s biggest names. In 1945-46, Seilder worked as an assistant to Alvar Aalto and later travelled to South America to work with Oscar Niemeyer.

 He formed his own practice in 1949 in Sydney where his parents had relocated. Seidler is considered one of the leading exponents of Modernism’s methodology in Australia and the first architect to fully express the principles of the Bauhaus there. He died in 2006, aged 82.