9A Water Street

Wahroonga NSW 2076

[view at modernhouse.co]
It is both a pleasant surprise, and remarkable event, when one encounters, as in the Gissing house, a modest domestic work by Harry Seidler that has survived the depredations of the market and developer, and retained, down to the smallest detail, the original quality and atmosphere of a total work it possessed at its completion in 1972. The Gissing House is that exceptional thing, a distinguished survivor whose authenticity is uncompromised by time, as if, by some miracle, it was kept captive in a time capsule for the past forty years.
The Gissing House builds on and perfected Seidler???s earlier achievement of his own Killara house completed three years previously in 1967.
The Gissing House is especially notable for a number of arresting features, one can see Seidler???s growing fascination with circular geometry, the deliberate juxtaposition of the circle motif against a rectangular grid framework. The geometry is a syncopated combination of circle on rectangle with the circle motif manifested and displaced to focus attention.
It is this play of circle and rectangle that for all the similarity with his own house, sets the Gissing achievement apart and properly distinguishes it from much of his other work. That, and the excellence of its execution - the off-form concrete is unrivalled and the white Boral concrete block walls are a unique element not repeated anywhere else.
Like the Harry and Penelope Seidler house at Killara, of which it was intended as a smaller version, the Gissing House possesses a similar spatial openness. In both the Seidler and Gissing houses, Seidler employed a split-level arrangement of adjacent floor plates separated by a full height void that opened the interior so the spaces flow in dynamic fashion between the different levels.
Light is the primary medium of architecture. This is nowhere more apparent than in the Gissing House which opens on all sides onto its garden. The enveloping garden is everywhere visible from inside.
Hourly changes in weather and the position of the sun affect the interior transforming it as slanting beams of sunlight highlight the raised impression left by timber shuttering on concrete beams, cloak the round forms in shadow, and register the insistent punctuation of blade walls that slice the space into streams that form and reform as it flows between the levels.
Total architecture was the goal of Modernism which sought to express its time; this meant that the architect considered and resolved his/her buildings from the smallest to the largest part, nothing was allowed to escape his attention.
The Gissing House realises this ideal in an impressive way with its garden serving as a complementary setting that engages and elevates the architectural order of the house. Miraculously we can appreciate and admire this achievement with the same confidence as its first residents.
ARCHITECT'S STATEMENT
The property is featured in the definitive collections of Harry Seidler, carrying the following description:
Built for a family of five, the Gissing House is surrounded by mature gardens with high trees.
The house is orientated to the sun, facing north with the living area opening onto a paved terrace around a swimming pool. The gentle ground slope was used to create a lower ground floor (with dining, kitchen and family room) and above it, a bedroom level. The three levels are connected by centrally placed half-flights of stairs. At the meeting of the levels, the section of the house is ???open??? to create a void, which spatially connects the different parts and creates changing vistas from one area to another as one moves through the house.
Recurring circular elements contrast with the rectangular outline of the plan and its screen wall projections. Construction is of hollow concrete block piers vertically reinforced, evenly spaced three metres apart, supporting concrete floors and roof.
- Harry Seidler
Reproduced with kind permission of Harry Seidler & Associates.
SPECIFICATION
??? 5 bedroom, 3 bath, 2 car
??? Approx. gross internal area: 291 sq m / 3,132 sq ft
??? Approx. gross land area: 1,688 sq m / 18,169 sq ft
??? Mature and intact, original Bruce Mackenzie landscape design
Gissing House
Designed and built: 1969-72
Architect: Harry Seidler & Associates
Design Architect: Harry Seidler
Landscape Architect: Bruce Mackenzie
Engineers: Miller Milston & Ferris Consulting Engineers
Photography: ?? Chris Colls
Significance: Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA) 20th