Harry Seidler-style ‘masterpiece’ for sale for first time in 50 years

If you think this house looks a bit like a Harry Seidler design, there’s a very good reason why.

It was the home of the late architect Henry Feiner, who was a partner at Harry Seidler & Associates and worked with the great man for more than 30 years from 1973.

Feiner had bought the semi with the traditional Victorian Gothic facade at 17 Edward St, Woollahra for $50k in 1976.

“It was completely unrenovated — a lot of dark, pokey rooms is what I remember, largely falling down,” his son, Robin Feiner, who wrote children’s books (including Clyde the Greyhound) with his wife, Beck, who illustrates them.

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“But he went straight to work on the redesign.”

The modernist addition to the rear was completed in 1982, which Robin describes as an “architectural masterpiece of the time”.

“I grew up in the house and Dad stayed there his whole life … it has an incredible sense of space and light and it’s lit up like a Christmas tree at night.”

The design was way ahead of its time, with the kitchen and dining area’s walls of glass opening to a side garden and courtyard.

Not surprisingly, it featured in many architectural and design magazines of the day and won a range of architectural awards.

Such is the timelessness of the architecture, it remains largely unchanged today although the interior finishes were given a more luxurious feel (with marble, granite and Vola fittings) in 2005.

One feature that Robin points out is the large feature wall in the courtyard, which he describes as “bookmatched pink Italian marble”, possibly inspired by Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion.

Says Robin: “He was an uncompromising modernist, just like Seidler, and he built something in Woollahra that you just wouldn’t be able to build today.”

The projects that the pair worked on together included MLC Centre, Grosvenor Place, Horizon and Cove Apartments among many others around Australia.

“Once Harry died [in 2006]the love affair was over,” Robin said, although he continued at the practice for a couple of years working with Seidler’s wife, Penelope, and finishing off projects, before he retired.

The four-bedroom. two-bathroom home on a 203sqm block is now listed with a buyer’s guide of $3m for a March 25 auction via Maclay Longhurst and Emily Davidson of Sotheby’s.