The Sydney Opera House

I'm normally not one who enjoys these organised tours and I must admit that my attention span in museums tends to fall on the shorter end of the spectrum. However, the tour of the Sydney Opera House managed to keep me engaged throughout. Everything I learned about this wonderful structure was so interesting.

It's no wonder to me that Sydney Opera House was recently awarded UNESCO world heritage recognition - this building is fantastic. There are six venues within the Opera House (hosting around 1500 a year) and the largest of which Chris described as 'a shell within a shell'. We were allowed into the largest concert hall and I forget how many cylinders there are for the organ but it's a lot! A massive amount in fact. The building was constructed using a total of something like only 7 different materials. Our guide explained how the roof isn't made entirely out of white tiles but also includes a number of creamier ones interspersed - otherwise the glare from the sun would make it too bright to look at. It was incredibly bright actually, despite this.

When John Utzon (the Danish architect who won the competition to design a concert venue for Sydney) arrived in Sydney in the late 50s, no one imagined how much the finished product would step over budget. Nor how far behind schedule it would fall - due to weather, contract changes and structurla problems, the building fell behind by 47 weeks in 1961.

There were big problems with the roof structure - the original shell shapes were undefined - and how it was going to be supported. Above is the final design based on shell segments taken from a sphere.

In 1966, the new Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, came into conflict with Utzon thinking him impractical. He eventually refused funding so that Utzon couldn't even pay his own staff. Utzon felt forced to resign and left the project in 1966.

Costing $102 million - the original 1957 estimate was $7 million! - the Opera House was finally completed in 1972.

I found it incredibly sad that Utzon never even returned to see the completed Sydney Opera House in his whole lifetime. Imagine, first of all winning a design competition for a new national symbol of culture for Australia; fllowing it through with the plans, seeing it being built, and then having to leave the project for good. It's incredibly sad and I'm surprised that Utzon was convinced to reconciliate and work on the Opera House again in 1999, working on a set of design principles as a guide for all future changes to the building. Even this wouldn't bring him back to Sydney to see his creation though: he remained in Denmark and worked from there.