arts, ideas & societyWikipedia1957–1973 · Sydney, Australia
The Sydney Opera House opened 16 years after its design won a competition
The Sydney Opera House stands on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour and is widely regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture. Danish architect Jørn Utzon won an international design competition in 1957, and work began in 1958 under the government of New South Wales. Utzon later resigned amid cost and schedule overruns, and an Australian team led by Peter Hall completed the building. Queen Elizabeth II opened it on 20 October 1973. Today its venues host over 1,800 performances a year for more than 1.4 million people, with resident companies including Opera Australia and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
The shell-like roofs were hard to build because the original curved forms could not be calculated or constructed as drawn. Engineers worked out a way of making them from sections cut from a single sphere, so that the ribs could be repeated and prefabricated.
It shows how an audacious design can outrun the means of building it: the project took years longer and cost far more than first planned, yet it became the symbol of a whole country. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, and more than ten million people visit the site each year.
Landmark buildings often overrun: Parliament buildings and cathedrals have taken decades, and cost disputes with their architects are common. The Opera House is the best known case of a design that was judged a triumph only after the argument was over.
Utzon left the project in 1966 and, as far as is documented, never saw the finished building in person.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · text CC BY-SA 4.0
Image: Wikimedia Commons
