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The Sydney Opera House. Otherwise known as the funny looking building off the coast Sydney Harbour at Bennelong Point. The Opera House was originally designed and built by architect, Jørn Utzon. A man who was literally a nobody in the business until his napkin drawing of the proposed Sydney Opera House was chosen as a winner of a competition. Jørn Utzon went to school to become an architect after deciding he didn’t want to follow in his fathers footsteps as a naval engineer. Construction began on the Sydney Opera House on March 2, 1959. This is when the first column went up. In 1964 the ribs for the shells began to rise into the sky over Bennelong Point. In 1965 a new government was elected into office for Australia and the new Minster of Work thought about and decided that the design and cost of this opera house was absurd and fired Utzon from the job and hired new chief architects.
The opera house opened in 1973 by Queen Victoria and Utzon was to receive an award for his outstanding work but wasn’t present.
Not until recently in 1999 did Utzon come back to see his masterpiece. He claims, ““I like to think the Sydney Opera House is like a musical instrument, and like any fine instrument, it needs a little maintenance and fine tuning, from time to time, if it is to keep on performing at the highest level.”” So the NSW government of Australia let him back on the architect/engineer team for further adjustments. In 2003 Utzon won the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, which is the highest award in the field of architecture for his work on the Sydney Opera House. Reconstruction and renovations continue to this date on the opera house making it greater and greater. Utzon died in 2008 in his sleep. But his legacy will continue on to help music and opera resonate in the building he designed.
The way it was designed was that the auditoriums would face the water away from the city. The auditoriums run north and south giving each auditorium interesting light throughout the day. There’s a courtyard in the middle of the auditoriums. The shells are made of an off-white tile while the pedestal is concrete in earth tones. The glass walls on the south side of the buildings are deemed special and unique to the time of which it was built. More and more buildings nowadays have more and more glass for light and to be “green”.
Has anyone ever visited the Opera House? Anyone know very interesting information that I missed?
Construction of the Opera House.
Open House
View of the glass walls.
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