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- Opera House, Sydney Cove, Sydney, Australia – 12 Apr 2013
14 Oct 2013 0001 GMT+0000
Above/featured: South view from Sydney Harbour towards the CBD – 12 Apr 2013 (450D).
Standing prominently above Sydney’s Bennelong Point, the white shelled structure serves as an icon for city and country.
The Sydney Opera House is made up of three groups of interlocking “vaulted shells” housing two primary concert auditorium spaces. The shell-like structures sit upon a large platform, encompassed on the outside by stepped terraces as staging or assembly areas for visitors.
On 20 October 1973, Queen Elizabeth II formally opened The Opera House. In the decades since, the building has become an icon for city and country. The building endures as a “landmark” and “ambassador” for both city and country. Immediately telling are the roof’s white shells, looking like wind-blown sails at a distance in the harbour.
Danish architect Jørn Utzon won the design competition in 1957 for the building. His brilliance was the ability to combine various elements of nature with the immediate surroundings of the physical site in the interplay among land, air, and water to “conspire and construct” a structure which would attract people into the facility and yet, simultaneously drawing people’s eyes from the building’s interior outwards to the sky, the sea, and the surrounding city.
How the present-day roof came to be has its own history, as Geraldine Brooks wrote in The New Yorker:
… The premature start (to the construction) meant, for instance, that piers needed to support the roof were sunk in place before the roof design was resolved. Utzon had drawn free-form sculptural shapes that the project engineers, Ove Arup & Partners, struggled in vain to convert into buildable solutions. Utzon, still living in Denmark, prowled his father’s shipyard. He thought about a saying of his father’s: “Here in the dockyard you construct and produce what you can’t buy, what is not to be had, what is necessary.” The large curves of the hulls gave him an idea: all of the Opera House’s roof shells could be generated from a single sphere. The solution was not only buildable; it allowed complex elements to be prefabricated using a small number of simple forms, as in his beloved Sung-dynasty manual. Excited, he returned to his studio and explained the idea to an assistant by cutting all the necessary shell-shaped segments from the skin of a single orange. However, the impact of the new design on the Sydney site was rather less elegant: the piers weren’t in the right places to bear the loads imposed by the new geometry. For several days, downtown Sydney shook from the explosions as the piers were blasted out and redone.
What does an orange have to do with the roof of the Opera House? A simple at-home experiment provides an answer.
Take a smooth round orange (or grapefruit), and slice the fruit in half.
Place one of the halves with the flat-side down onto a flat counter or table top.
Carefully cut from the peel four triangular-wedges of different sizes.
The four pieces have two things in common: (1) they’re all obviously made of the same material, and (2) despite their different sizes, all four pieces have the same radius of curvature, as each piece has been cut from the same peel or surface of the fruit (from the same sphere).
From RIBA’s (Royal Institute of British Architects) “Demonstration model of the opera house”:
The roof structure of Utzon’s competition-winning design could not be built as planned as the shell forms of the roof were irregular and structurally unsound. Utzon’s solution was to take all the forms from a single sphere, as shown in this demonstration model. This allowed all the shell components to be calculated and then prefabricated.
and from DeDeCe blog and The Opera House Project:
The simplicity of the idea appealed very much to Utzon. It would mean that not only the building’s form could be prefabricated from a repetitive geometry, but that a uniform pattern could also be achieved for the tiling of the exterior surface. It was the binding discovery that allowed for the distinctive characteristics of Sydney Opera House to be finally realised. The vaulted arches, the exceptionally beautiful finish of the tiles and the timeless sail-like silhouette of the house all derive from his decision to move the form to a spherical geometry.”
“Key to the Shells”, Jørn Utzon, 1961 – photo by JoanJoc (Wiki)
On the plaque outside the Opera House (shown above) appears a quote from Jørn Utzon:
“… after three years of intensive search for a basic geometry for the shell complex I arrived in October 1961 at the spherical solutions shown here. I call this my ‘key to the shells’ because it solves all the problems of construction by opening up to mass production, precision in manufacture and simple erection and with this geometrical system I attain full harmony between all the shapes in this fantastic complex.”
American architect Louis Kahn once wrote that:
“The sun did not know how beautiful its light was until it was reflected off this building.”
and in 2003, Jørn Utzon was pleased to remark that:
“To me it is a great joy to know how much the building is loved, by Australians in general and by Sydneysiders in particular.”
Political issues forced Utzon to leave both project and Australia, but reconciliation eventually came between architect and country. Utzon was in 2003 awarded architecture’s greatest honour, the Pritzker Prize, for which the prize jury stated:
… There is no doubt that the Sydney Opera House is his masterpiece. It is one of the great iconic buildings of the 20th century, an image of great beauty that has become known throughout the world—a symbol for not only a city, but a whole country and continent.
In 2007, UNESCO recognized the site’s importance and heritage value to modern architectural history by inscribing the Sydney Opera House to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Opera House was the youngest cultural site at 33 years of age to be included on the World Heritage List, and one of only two cultural sites listed while the building’s architect was still alive. Utzon died one year later in 2008, never having returned to Australia to visit the completed building. Even from afar, The Opera House never strayed far from his thoughts.
The Aboriginal name for this location is “Tu-bow-gule” or “”Djubuguli”, next to “warrang” (now, Sydney Cove). Bennelong Point was named after Woollarawarre Bennelong who was of the Wangal people to the west, even though geographically, the location was inhabited by the Gadigal people. Formerly a small island connected to the mainland at low tide, this spit of land was used by the Gadigal people as a place for gatherings and celebrations.
I set foot in Sydney and Australia for the first time in 2007. Since then, whenever I’m back in the city, I’m compelled to return to Sydney Cove. The sight of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House tells me all is right in this part of the world.
Sunrise from Mrs. Macquarie’s Point. Photo, 13 Jul 2007 (A510).
Open jaw at Bennelong Point. Photo, 26 Sep 2010 (450D).
One of the overhanging shells. Photo, 8 Oct 2010 (450D).
Where separate shells converge. Photo, 8 Oct 2010 (450D).
Individual tiles. Photo, 8 Oct 2010 (450D).
Spherical wedges at equal radii. Photo, 5 Oct 2012 (450D).
“Play” by the Spinifex Group, at the Opera House for VIVID Sydney. Photo, 29 May 2013 (450D).
“Play” by the Spinifex Group, at the Opera House for VIVID Sydney. Photo, 3 Jun 2013 (450D).
Late-afternoon illumination, from Sydney Cove. Photo, 12 May 2013 (450D).
• Sydney Opera House: Utzon Design Principles – May 2002, PDF.
• Geraldine Brooks’ The New Yorker article: about Utzon’s story, conflict, exile from the project, and subsequent reconciliation with the Sydney Opera House.
• Photographic highlights, from VIVID Sydney (2013).
Except for the Wikimedia photo, I made all remaining photos on multiple visits between 2007 and 2013 with a Canon PowerShot A510 (A510) and Canon EOS450D/Rebel XSi (450D). I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land called Australia, and the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as traditional custodians of the place called Sydney. References to Aboriginal placenames: ANU, Australian Museum, Creative Spirits, and Pocket Oz. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-Cp.
Posted by HL fotoeins
Categories: Architecture, Arts, Australia, Culture, MyRTW, Photography, Travel, UNESCO World Heritage, Urban Photography
Tags: Bennelong Point, city landmark, Djubuguli, Eora Nation, fotoeins, Gadigal People, Jørn Utzon, Opera House, Sydney, Sydney Opera House, Tubowgule, UNESCO, Utzon, Warrang, World Heritage
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[…] Happy 40 to the Sydney Opera House (fotoeins.com) […]
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By Sydney on a Shoestring | Explore, Discover, Blog on 14 Oct 2013 at 1306 GMT+0000
I live in Sydney, and never tire of seeing the Opera House. It makes me happy every time I pass it. Great post on my of my favourite buildings in the world!
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By frugalfirstclasstravel on 14 Oct 2013 at 1907 GMT+0000
Thanks, Jo! Spending 3 months in Sydney this past (southern) autumn taught me a few things about the city. One lesson was how important the Opera House and the adjacent Coathanger are as symbols to the city and (hopefully) to its people. The second lesson was the feeling the sight always gave me, the thrill never diminishing. Thanks again for reading and for your comment!
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By fotoeins on 15 Oct 2013 at 1951 GMT+0000
ahhh you’ve made me so homesick. please give the big white girl a wave and a kiss from me.
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By Chasing the Donkey on 20 Oct 2013 at 2038 GMT+0000
Hi! I’ve spent some time in Sydney over the last 6 years; I just spent 3 months there this past (southern) autumn from March to June. I’d wave and blow her a kiss if I could; I miss Sydney! 🙂 Thanks for reading and for your comment! (Love your Aussie-expat-Croatian story!)
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