Clear daytime view from the harbour: all the sails, podium and water, deep blue sky. No scaffolding.

Sydney Opera House

Bennelong Point, Sydney

Jørn Utzon; completed by Peter Hall, Lionel Todd and David Littlemore. 1959 to 1973. Modernism.

Size
183 m long, 65 to 67 m to the highest point
Material
Precast concrete ribs and lids, 1,056,006 Swedish tiles, Tarana granite podium
Status
UNESCO World Heritage, 2007. A working performing arts centre

Building began in 1959 before anyone knew how to make the roof. Utzon and Ove Arup’s engineers took about four years to find the answer: cut every shell from one sphere, 75.2 m in radius, so that ribs of different lengths could come from common moulds. A falling-out with the government over cost and control led Utzon to resign on 28 February 1966, and he never came back to Australia. Queen Elizabeth II opened it in 1973. A lottery raised about A$102 million, almost the whole bill. Utzon was asked back as a consultant in 1999, and the room named after him opened in 2004.

Read about Modernism in Sydney

Sources

  1. Utzon departs the House, Sydney Opera House
  2. The spherical solution, Sydney Opera House
  3. Construction begins, Sydney Opera House
  4. Roof Cladding of the Sydney Opera House (Michael Lewis, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of NSW, vol. 106, 1973), Royal Society of NSW
  5. 9. The House the Lotteries Built, NSW Treasury