It was at this point in 1948 that he was enticed to Australia by his mother Rose Seidler to design and build a house for his parents. He came to Australia via Brazil and contact with the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, for whom he worked for several months. Philip Drew has written that "the dominant influences on Seidler were Gropius, Breuer and Albers; Gropius revealed the ethical basis of Modern architecture and demonstrated the importance of method, Breuer, in a real sense showed Seidler how buildings are made, and developed his architectonic skills as well as influencing his appreciation of space and feeling for materials, but it was from Josef Albers that Seidler learned about the perceptual basis of visual form." Rose Seidler House at Wahroonga on Sydney's North Shore was Seidler's first commission, for his mother. He was 25 at the time. It was built in 1948-50 as part of a family estate of three houses (including Julian Rose House c.1950 and the Marcus Seidler House c.1949-51). Located on 2.6 hectares of natural bushland overlooking the Ku-ring-gai National Park, it was a watershed in Australian culture. As possibly the purest example of mid-century modern domestic architecture in Australia, it was enormously controversial when built, stimulating much social comment and intellectual debate. Rose Seidler House is listed on the State Heritage Register and is run as a house museum by the Historic Houses Trust. Seidler's American take on Modernism contrasted with the European modernism of early Australian adopters such as Syd Ancher and Robin Boyd. Seidler was lauded by an older generation of modernists in Australia such as Boyd, Baldwinson and Ancher. Seidler stood his ground and refused to compromise his architectural vision in the face of restrictive building regulations in New South Wales during the 1940s and 1950s, leading to several landmark court cases. Seidler's early houses from 1949 to 1954 established an authentic version of modern architecture embracing Gropius' modernist principles (which stemmed from the Bauhaus). He designed many houses in either the box-like form of Le Corbusier or the "H" plan of Marcel Breuer. Seidler was busy throughout the 1950s largely designing houses for private clients. In the early 1960s Seidler began to receive commissions for apartments and office buildings such as Ithaca Gardens Apartments in Elizabeth Bay (1960), Blues Point Tower apartments in McMahons Point (1961); Lend Lease House in Sydney (1961) [Demolished 19??] and Arlington