The Sydney Opera House began when Eugene Goossens lobbied for a proper venue for opera and orchestral music, and Premier Joseph Cahill launched an international design competition in 1955. The winner, announced in January 1957, was Danish architect Jørn Utzon, whose design drew on natural forms such as bird wings, shells and sails. The curved roof shells proved extremely hard to engineer, and the team went through at least twelve geometric iterations between 1957 and 1963. In mid-1961 they found a workable solution: making every shell a section cut from a sphere, so arches of varying length could be cast in a common mould. Construction ran from 1959 to 1973, and Utzon received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2003.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.