ARCHITECTURAL WONDERS -THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

BY KENNY SLAUGHT

Every architect dreams of creating some signature building, a structure so iconic that it becomes impossible to imagine a city or nation without it.

New York City has the Statue of Liberty, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, and London has the Houses of Parliament. And, in 1973, Sydney, Australia, joined the ranks of cities that possess architectural wonders with the opening of the Sydney Opera House.

Located on Bennelong Point, near where the first European settlers arrived in Australia in the late 1700s, the Sydney Opera House began as the dream of the premier of New South Wales, J.J. Cahill, and the director of the state's Conservatorium for Music, Eugene Goossens.

Sixteen years after Danish architect Jørn Utzon'sdesign was selected in a competition, Queen Elizabeth II presided over a formal opening that included music by Beethoven and a fireworks extravaganza.

Naturally, the 16 years between the creation of Utzon’s preliminary designs and the completion of the building included considerable strife, much of which is of interest to any student of architecture, but the Sydney Opera House remains one of the world's most recognizable structures.

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE FACTS AND FIGURES

• Part of the Opera House's charm comes from its fanciful, delicate design, which has been compared to the sails of a ship or seashells.

• Of course, for many first-time visitors, the initial reaction is one of awe; the Opera House is an enormous building, with its tallest shell rising 221 feet above the sea.

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE FACTS AND FIGURES

• About 217 miles of stressing cables support a 26,800-ton roof covered with more than a million individual tiles and festooned with some 15,500 light bulbs.

• While it cost some $102 million to build, roughly $95 million more than the initial budget, the investment has largely paid off, as experts have estimated that the Opera House is responsible for over $1 billion in revenue for the country.

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE FACTS AND FIGURES

• The building's interior is no less impressive, in part because the Sydney Opera House was exhaustively tested in order to achieve world-class acoustics.

• Its Concert Hall can seat more than 2,500 individuals, while the Opera Theatre boasts a capacity of over 1,500.

• The building also includes a chamber music suite that doubles as a cinema, rehearsal spaces, recording studios, a drama theatre, gift shops, cafes, restaurants, and many other spaces, given the structure's more than 1,000 rooms.

THE DESIGN OF THE OPERA HOUSE

• In the 1950s, the Opera House was still a dream, though one that moved forward rapidly after Goossens convinced Cahill to pursue a world-class performance space for the city.

• Cahill's government announced a design competition in 1955, and a year later, 233 entries had been received.

THE DESIGN OF THE OPERA HOUSE• Legend has it that an American judge,

Eero Saarinen, the architect behind the St. Louis Arch, arrived late and immediately dismissed everything the other judges had recommended.

• In the pile of rejected designs, Saarinen found Utzon's sketches and pronounced them the clear winner.

• In January 1957, Utzon received £5,000 for winning the competition, and a few months later, he arrived in Australia for the first time.

THE DESIGN OF THE OPERA HOUSE

• The design of the Opera House went through numerous iterations based on Utzon's initial sketches. Reportedly, Utzon had been inspired by the fronds of palm trees and the process of shipbuilding, but his first designs were considered impossible from an engineering standpoint—especially the dramatic roof shells.

THE DESIGN OF THE OPERA HOUSE• However, thanks to the help of Ove Arun, an

engineer and fellow Dane, Utzon struck upon the notion of forming the shells from triangular slices of a sphere, a process immortalized in a bronze model in front of the Opera House that suggests Utzon'soriginal methodology: dunking a beach ball into a bathtub to observe the shapes that could be cut from a spherical surface.

• Spherical segments, which offered significantly more structural strength and could be prefabricated, made what was believed to be impossible completely realistic.

ARCHITECTURE AS COALITION BUILDING - UTZON'SDEPARTURE

• Despite overcoming engineering challenges, Utzon's tenure as the chief architect of the Sydney Opera House became more notable for his dramatic resignation.

• In many respects, massive public architecture projects are limited as much by political viability as aesthetic or physical constraints, and when a new government arose in New South Wales, a new minister of public works began to question Utzon's methods.

ARCHITECTURE AS COALITION BUILDING - UTZON'SDEPARTURE

• A more adroit politician may have succeeded at holding onto the design reins.

• Utzon, unfortunately, preferred principle, resigning from the project in 1966, three years after the original design called for the Opera House to be completed. He would not return to Australia.

ARCHITECTURE AS COALITION BUILDING - UTZON'SDEPARTURE

• The Opera House's completion was led by Australian architects, Peter Hall chief among them, and while the exterior was largely finished, the interior was not.

• Hall went to work, axing a proposed multipurpose space and replacing it with the present design of a separate Concert Hall and Opera Theatre in order to achieve the best possible acoustics.

• The Hall team finished the Opera House, at a cost of $102 million, in 1973.

THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE AT 42

• While the Sydney Opera House faced a tumultuous construction process, it has unquestionably become one of the most iconic buildings in the world since its completion.

• More than 8.2 million people visit the Opera House every year, and it has hosted everyone from Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II to Oprah Winfrey and Ella Fitzgerald.

THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE AT 42

• In 2007, the United Nations named the Sydney Opera House a World Heritage site, only a few years after Utzon won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's highest honor.

• However, Utzon felt that the highest praise came in 2004, when the Opera House's administrators named the Reception Hall the “Utzon Room" following the architect's redesign of the space that began in 1999.