Art + Science = #Beautifulworld. This is why I love this building.
Overview
Located on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Opera House complex is comprised of two main halls, side-by-side, on the waterfront of Sydney, Australia. The first is a concert hall with a capacity of over 2500 and a modernized, redesigned acoustic panels that make it a building with one of the best acoustics anywhere in the world.
We had the opportunity to experience it on New Years Eve 2024, attending the Gala Concert and as soon as the orchestra started and the opera singers began, I had no doubt about the sound. Definitely the best I’ve ever heard. The second hall is the Joan Sutherland Theatre, the Opera Hall with a capacity of 1,507 and home to some of the most famous operas in the world. It is also home to other performance stages, Drama Theatre (544), Playhouse (398), The Studio (400), and the Utzon Room (210). Officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in October 1973, the famous architecture was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2007 and also was a finalist for the New Seven Wonders of the World. UNESCO called the Opera House “a masterpiece of 20th century architecture.”
History
Bennelong Point (originally called Cattle Point), was named for Bennelong, one of two Aboriginal people (the other man was named Colebee) who served as liaisons between Australia’s first British settlers and the local population. The small building where Bennelong lived once occupied the site.
In 1947 the resident conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Eugene Goossens, became the voice for turning Sydney into a new world cultural haven and advocated to build a home for not just the symphony orchestra but all musical genres. In 1956 the state government sponsored an international competition for a design that was to include a building with two halls and architects from some 30 countries submitted 233 entries. Interestingly, the Sydney Opera House drawings are public records held in the archives of the New South Wales government. Bennelong Point was selected as the location.
The Danish architect Jørn Utzon was unknown for his work at the time, yet his entry for the competition which consisted of a few simple sketches intrigued the famous Eero Saarinen who was part of the jury. Eero Saarinen, was the most well-known of the jury, a Finnish-American architect, and one of the masters of American 20th-century architecture. In 1956, he was building the TWA Terminal at JFK (if you look at the design, there might be a clue to why he liked Utzon’s design), having already won acclaim for the design of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis in 1947.
Photo by Acroterion, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
He was not only an architect but also an extraordinary furniture designer. He was friends with Charles and Ray Eames and Hans and Florence Knoll. Eero’s Tulip and Womb chairs are now housed in museums and are iconic along with Eames chair. There are lots of debated anecdotes about how Eero became a judge 10 days into the competition and picked out Utzon’s designs from the Reject pile but there is consensus that Eero was very influential in the final choice. “The drawings submitted by Utzon are simple to the point of being diagrammatic,” observed the jury. “Nevertheless, we are convinced that they present a concept of an opera house that is capable of becoming one of the great buildings of the world.”
The grand prize was 5,000 Australian pounds. Utzon visited Sydney in 1957 to help supervise the project. His office moved to Palm Beach, Sydney in February 1963.
Design
The construction of the podium began in March 1959 when Utzon was not yet done with the design of the opera house and was overseen by the renowned engineering firm Ove Arup & Partners. The project was built in three phases: the foundation and building of the podium overlooking the Sydney Harbor, the construction of the outer shells, and the construction of the interior.
Between 1957-1963 in the midst of the construction of the podium, Utzon and Arup worked on developing a shell system that would make the original spherical scheme structurally possible. Twelve iterations later, they came up with a solution that consisted of a ribbed system of precast concrete shells created from sections of a sphere. This was a a-ha moment because this helped them solve the problem of encasing a fully functioning auditorium and also simplified the construction as it permitted each rib to be built up of a number of standard segments cast in a common mold at the site. Utzon wanted the shells to be portrayed like large while sails in contrast to the deep blue waters of the ocean it stood upon. In order to achieve this aesthetic, the shells are covered with 1,056,066 ceramic tiles made in Sweden from clay and crushed stone. Along with the placement of the tiles, it took eleven years to complete the iconic roof structure.
While structural engineer Ove Arup had been credited with bringing the vision of architect Jorn Utzon to fruition, the practical realities of the radical design’s construction fell to a Hornibrook a builder from Brisbane who had built multiple bridges. In 1962, when the company was awarded the construction contract, Manuel Hornibrook was 69 years old. 5,000 drawings by Manuel Hornibrook were unearthed in the State Library of New South Wales, and 30,000 mathematical equations were done to ensure the accuracy of the erection arch. All done by hand! An engineering marvel.
The exterior glass structure is supported by vertical steel mullions which extend all the way up the mouth of the shells. Bronze glazing bars run from these mullions to help support the 2000 panes of glass, which was designed by Ove Arup & Partners, and consists of two layers of glass joined by an interlayer of plastic in order to strengthen the windows and provide better sound insulation. The entire structure is supported on 588 concrete piers sunk as much as 25 m (82 ft) below sea level.
Apart from the tile of the shells and the glass curtain walls of the foyer spaces, the building’s exterior is largely clad with aggregate panels composed of pink granite quarried at Tarana, though they were originally designed to be covered in red tiles. However, when the tiles were delivered, they were a different shade of red than what the architect had envisioned. The tiles were then tested under different lighting conditions, and it was discovered that the tiles looked pink under the bright Australian sun. Jørn Utzon, loved the new color and decided to keep the pink tiles instead of replacing them with the original red ones.
The cooling system for the Sydney Opera House uses seawater from the surrounding harbor. It circulates the cold water from the harbor through pipes stretching 35 kilometers to power both the heating and air conditioning in the building.
Our guide, who was excellent, painted the picture of grand processions in ancient times, and as you enter the Opera house and walk through the halls, climb the steps, you do sense the grandeur. You know you are going to experience something extraordinary as you make your way to one of the halls.
Along with the multiple performance halls, three restaurants, six bars, and sixty dressing rooms were added. The building has a total of 1000 rooms with access through a concourse that encircles the entire building and links the five performance spaces.
The Sydney Opera House opened the way for the immensely complex geometries of some modern architecture.
Controversy
As construction was underway, the complexity of implementing the design and the rising costs also started to raise tensions in Australia. After the 1965 election of the Liberal Party, with Robert Askin becoming Premier of New South Wales, the relationship of client, architect, engineers and contractors became increasingly tense. Askin had been a “vocal critic of the project prior to gaining office.” His new Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, was even less sympathetic.
Utzon was highly reluctant to respond to questions or criticism from the client’s Sydney Opera House Executive Committee (SOHEC). However, he was greatly supported throughout by a member of the committee and one of the original competition judges, Harry Ingham Ashworth. Utzon was unwilling to compromise on some aspects of his designs that the clients wanted to change. By February 1966, Utzon was owed more than $100,000 in fees. Hughes then withheld funding so that Utzon could not even pay his own staff. The government minutes record that following several threats of resignation, Utzon finally stated to Davis Hughes: “If you don’t do it, I resign.” Hughes replied: “I accept your resignation. Thank you very much. Goodbye.” Utzon left the project on 28 February 1966. He said that Hughes’s refusal to pay him any fees and the lack of collaboration caused his resignation. In March 1966, Hughes offered him a subordinate role as “design architect” under a panel of executive architects, without any supervisory powers over the House’s construction, but Utzon rejected this. Utzon left the country never to return.
Politics!!!
His position was principally taken over by Peter Hall, who became largely responsible for the interior design. Other persons appointed that same year to replace Utzon were E. H. Farmer as government architect, D. S. Littlemore and Lionel Todd.
The building was completed and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in October of 1973. With an original estimate of 7 million dollars the budget was vastly exceeded with a final cost of 102 million dollars.
Happy Ending
In 1999 Utzon agreed to return as the building’s architect, overseeing an improvement project. He redesigned the former Reception Hall, and it was reopened in 2004 as the Utzon Room. It has an eastern view of Sydney Harbour and is used for receptions, seminars and other meetings, and chamber music performances. Two years later a new colonnade was completed, marking the first alteration to the Opera House’s exterior since 1973.
In 2002, Utzon began design renovations that would bring the building’s interior closer to his original vision. His architect son, Jan Utzon, traveled to Australia to plan the renovations and continue future development of the theaters.
“It is my hope that the building shall be a lively and ever-changing venue for the arts,” Jorn Utzon told reporters. “Future generations should have the freedom to develop the building to contemporary use.”
In 2003, Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The well-known architect Frank Gehry was on the Pritzker Jury and wrote that Utzon had “made a building well ahead of its time, far ahead of available technology, and he persevered through extraordinary malicious publicity and negative criticism to build a building that changed the image of an entire country. It is the first time in our lifetime that an epic piece of architecture has gained such universal presence.”
Click Here to see a Photo Gallery of the Sydney Opera House
Tour Details
The best way to experience the Opera House is to attend a show. But complement that with one of their highly recommend tours. You will get to see the venue while it is actively being used and that is a treat. While listening to the history and learning the intricacies of the architecture, you also get to see behind the scenes production of a show. The hustle, bustle, the excitement, the beauty of the art around you, the tourists, the artists, the vistas, the lines, the arcs, the patterns, I could go on. It hits you. The tour is an hour long. Enjoy it.
Karthik Raja 