Journal Day 41 - The Sydney Opera House. A little architectural essay!

---

Up early enough to get train from kings cross to town hall and then on to Milson's Point. From there view of the harbour and my first glance at one of the most famous and beloved buildings on earth, the Sydney Opera House.

Spent a bit of time wandering around the Lunar Park which had a real old-time, authentic fun-fare feel with quaint old style paintings and a load of weird and wonderful rides and fun things for kids.

Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Walked across Sydney harbour bridge. As I expected the view was spectacular and the opera house looks perfect from every angle.
I explored the harbour area and walked up to and around the Opera House, making sure to get a good stroke along the shape of the roof and a fondle of the famous diamond shaped tiles.
Got a tour of the inside. This tour guide couldn't have been more different from the guide at Ha Long bay. For a start he had perfect English and was overflowing with information delivered in a fun, easily digestible way. I was very appreciative of this as this was definitely a highlight of my trip and the tour heavily revolved around the architecture, the design and construction of this unique building and also a lot about the architect himself, Jorn Utzon.

The Sydney Opera House.

The following 'essay' is entirely composed from notes I made during the tour and is therefore probably a bit rough around the edges. I've just run my eyes back over it and I think it's turned into a bit of a flippin thesis.
But the tour was very informative and I left the place after with a much richer understanding of the much loved building and it's creator....

The Sydney opera house is pretty much the most famous building of the 20th Century and nearly never came to be in the first place. It's history is full of chance, luck, ingenuity and it's construction was fraught with difficulties and budget and time overruns. And many thought the challenges it posed in its form to be insurmountable.
The Site at the end of the harbour peninsula was at one stage that of an old fort.
The idea to have a new theater at all was an idea dreamed up in the 1950s by the Conductor of a Sydney orchestra.
30 possible sites were considered and in 1955 there was a design competition to choose an architect and scheme for the opera house.
But as luck would have it, or destiny maybe, a finish judge had arrived late into the judging process.

The Finish judge wanted to see all entries before allowing the verdict to be given. A selection of designs were taken out of the collection of entries and amongst them was the unusual sketch design by the Danish architect Jorn Utzon.

Having been previously dismissed by the other judges as a flight of fantasy it was looked at afresh and it became clear that this design was by far the most interesting, dynamic scheme. Most of the other entries had presented more customary box shaped forms but Utzon's vibrant hand-drawn sketches were completely unlike any other. Depicting the opera house almost as a series of 3 ships with billowing sails reaching out over the harbour, each containing the required theatres. We were shown a video on the tour which contained images of other design entries along with Utzon's. Although there were plenty of exciting schemes and ideas, it was obvious that Utzon's was unique.
His design broke with the brief for the competition in a number of ways but that didn't really matter, it never does. The design was presented to the public and really captured their imagination. There was something about it that perfectly captured the vision for the site at the end of the harbour's peninsula. That of a ship's pure white billowing sails out in the harbour.
Apparently Utzon had never even visited the site before he designed the scheme, but somehow his sketches were perfect for the site. This isn't an uncommon occurrence. I've designed quite a few houses in n. Ireland without being given the time by my directors to even visit the site. Even though it's critical to really get a feel for the site, it orientation for light, views etc. So for Utzon to capture the right sense of drama for the harbour site is really remarkable.

When it came to working out how to begin constructing the design, it became clear that Utzon's sketches completely lacked detail. As a competition entry this is as it should be, why waste time considering construction details when your design mightn't even be shortlisted. Therefore what Utzon had presented to the competition were essentially a series of diagrammatic sketches.
These sketches three up all sorts of challenges in terms of construction and, due to the prestige of the site, the engineer Ove Arup was brought in to help make the design a reality.
After a significant amount of work by Utzon, Arup and all the rudimentary plans were approved and the project was planned at a budget of $7million with a construction period of 3 years... It proved to not be so easy.

The finished building was a groundbreaking feat of engineering and walking around it on the tour you wouldn't need to be an architect to be impressed. Everything is different from the norm and the spaces are fresh and light and despite the overall consistency of the external envelope I found the interior spaces to be constantly different around every corner.

We saw into the Small drama theater first which is the busiest of the 3 main theaters. There are constantly exciting little acts performing here across an array of genres.
In the lobby of the 2nd theater you are confronted with a bold purple carpet below the bare textured forms of the soaring concrete structure which forms the ceiling. And light floods on through the lightweight glazing which is designed to flex with the forces of the elements blowing up through the harbour and hitting the building. And the views through the glazing here is a long panoramic across the river.
Apparently the spaces within the theaters can be hired for functions and many celebrities have been wed or thrown parties here during the years.

We were shown a second video in this lobby video which illustrated sone of the construction issues which had to be overcome.
Utzon is quoted to have said that he 'likes to be on the edge of the impossible.' This was definitely the case with the Opera House and it seemed for a long time that it was actually impossible.
Many mathematical formulae were tried and tested to make Utzon's geometries work but none of them were able to succeed in making the dramatic sails buildable.
Building the huge sculptural forms in cast concrete also threw up lots of problems.
16 different schemes for the construction were investigated and rejected.
Even the master engineer Ove Arup admitted defeat at one point.
At the point of failure to find an answer it was the architect himself who found the solution to the structural riddle.
Utzon presented that the answer lay in the 'Spherical solution.'
This solution simplified everything and suddenly the construction became possible.
Utzon's 'spherical solution' is actually a beautifully conceptual solution based on the fact that he took the shapes for each of the many different sized sail forms from the same sphere/globe.
This meant that the curvature of all of the main shapes were exactly the same, even though they were of varying sizes and lengths!
In terms of constructing the opera house, it meant that all the main structural forms could be made up from smaller sections cast from form-work with a curvature that was consistently the same. This dramatically simplified the workload and made the forming of the shapes and the construction of the building a reality.
Basically, although the sails were all different, their Curvature was constant...
I personally think this is beautiful due to it's simplicity and it was presented by Utzon very elegantly by way of a model of a sphere from which he could lift various shapes which represented the different roof forms. A simple solution, simply presented, to solve an extremely complicated problem. I guess that's architecture and engineering at its best!

So work began on-site in 1963 and the large roof vault forms started to be erected in front of the public.
Apparently more steel was used in the structure than in the Sydney harbour bridge. The project was full of difficulty and resulted in huge time and budget overruns.
With a change of government pressure was lumped on the Utzon and the construction team. To try to hurry things along Utzon was told he either had to work along with a much bigger team which would mean losing much control or else resign from the job altogether.
In 1966 much of the roof structure complete but the pressure got to be too much to Utzon and he resigned from the job. He returned home to Denmark and sadly never returned to see his masterpiece complete. He died at the age of 99. But we were told on the tour that there was a happy ending to Utzon's story, but we'd have to wait to the end to find out.

So 16 years after construction began, and after 102 million dollars had been spent, the Opera House was complete! A lot more than the original estimate of $7million over 3 years..!
To help fund this huge amount a Lottery was made specifically for the building costs.

We were then taken to the large main Concert theater which is constructed as an acoustic cocoon to optimise the sound from the orchestras and groups that perform. The auditorium is clad with timbers for sound dampening and above the stage hang 'acoustic clouds' - large discs that make 1/4 of the sound from the orchestra bounce directly back to them so they can hear their own sounds.
There's a gigantic pipe organ with 1000 hidden pipes on top of the the 138 pipes which are on display. It can apparently only be played professionally by a few organ players in the world. When we were there the stage was bring set for the YouTube symphony with imagery projected all over the auditorium which looked amazing.

Next we were brought to the large entrance foyer and outside to look at the roof sails.
Apparently there are 1056006 tiles on the roofs interspersed with different colours/shades so the overall effect is not blindingly white. Rain naturally cleans the tiles and the water runs-off to be deposited in the harbour.
It took 3 years to build the tiles

We then moved to the 2nd biggest theater- the opera theater.
There are currently 3 operas in rotation.
Carmel, barber of Seville and partenope by Handel.
The theater here is designed to optimise the Natural voice of the opera singer by using Yellow Caribbean timber to clad the ceiling to dampen the sound and prevent unwanted reflections.
At the back of the stage, a hydrolic lift powered by water from harbour is used to change the sets.
The theater is also used for Ballets and due to limited wing space Body- builders had been employed in the past to wait hidden in the wings to catch dancers leaping off the side of the stage.
Above the stage is a blank board onto which translations are projected for translation of what the opera singer is yelling about- this was the first
Place to do this.
There's also a large net above the opera pit to stop galling off stage disasters! And the theatre has a 1500 person capacity.

Regarding the happy ending to the architect's story.

To show the respect that Australia and it's public had towards the designer of their most famous landmark building, Utzon was Re-engaged as the building's architect in 1999 and he was promised that all subsequent changes, even after his death, are to remain true to his original design principles for the building.
He first alteration when re-engaged was to redesign a small studio room which was then named in his honour - The Utzon Room.
His alterations were to strip away the low ceiling to reveal the striking underside of the concrete structure on a Neo-brutalist style, and to break through the external wall to create a wide glazed view our over the river.
Along one side of the small room is a large tapestry which he designed. The abstract design is an artistic representation of the shapes and colours which he saw when he closed his eyes while listening to a piece of orchestral music. He said that this is how he 'saw music'- the result is a beautiful, colourful Tapestry. His daughter Lin Utzon- an artist in her own right assisted in the creation of the tapestry.
So at the end of the day, in the naming of this small, humble part of the Opera House Utzon was given the respectful appreciation that he deserved for the work that consumed most of his life.
The tour ended in this room.
The tour was clearly and excellently presented.

In the Opera House shop after the tour I continued my trend of buying too many souvenirs. Got myself a t-shirt shoeing the geometry of Utzon's roof design and a few other bits and bobs.

I also saw a large coffe-table book called a 'tribute to Jorn utzon.' I opened randomly the book to see a quote from Jorn Utzon himself:

'As an architect I believe that it is very important to fall in love with the nature of things instead of fighting for form and style.'

I thought this was a particularly good quote to sum up the opera house. Incredibly simple in it's original sketch design but when it proved to be incredibly difficult to construct and engineer, it was ultimately solved by Utzon himself. A complex solution based on possibly the simplest and purest of forms... the sphere.

There was also another quote. This time Jorn Utzon quoting Goethe. So I will quote Utzon quoting Gothe:

"give me a work to which I can devote myself totally, and with love and skill, then it is no longer work. It becomes art and an expression of love"


It was pouring down outside so I ate in the opera house restaurant.
I Had a look at what was on o er the next few days. A few operas and tomorrow a performance of the YouTube symphony (a selection of performers who had been selected by their YouTube uploads). The YouTube one looked really interesting but on at 3pm. I won't be back from the blue mountains by then. So an opera then? Texted my mum&dad to see if it would be a bit crazy to book myself into an opera. Mum said yes so didn't think anymore about it and just went ahead and booked myself a date with myself to see 'The Barber of Seville' for tomorrow evening!? Why not? So far I've been to a show at the royal palace temple complex in Bangkok, a light show music concert at the Bayon temple at Angkor Wat, the water puppet theatre in Hanoi.... So I'm at the Mecca of operas, The Sydney Opera House, so I guess I have to see something.

Finished the evening by having an expensive pint of Coopers Pale Ale in the trendy Blue bar, high on the 36th floor of the Shangli La hotel overlooking the illuminated city of Sydney.

Not a bad day.

---