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Sydney Opera House builders reflect on historic job as the icon turns 50

2023-10-20T16:55:00-04:00

The construction of the Sydney Opera House was a famously fraught saga, but as the city’s landmark turns 50, former workers remember a quite different atmosphere on the site itself.

Trade unionists and other workers were not the only sources of labor disputes on the site, as Jørn Utzon memorably quit midway over a payment dispute on the 14-year construction project that became essentially the Brooklyn Bridge of the Southern Hemisphere when it finally opened on October 20, 1973.

A design known for its engineering breakthroughs, it also was historic in terms of the concessions made to workers, says Solidarity Online. Their execution of Utzon’s complex vision went over schedule and budget by ten years and $95 million dollars. The result, as Frank Gehry said, was “a building that changed the image of an entire country.”

“The work was precise. You can see it in the building today. Everything is perfect,” one worker told The Guardian. The BBC also has a retrospective look back in pictures here.

On the cultural implications of SANAA's latest Art Gallery of New South Wales expansion

2023-01-11T15:09:00-05:00

The Art Gallery of New South Wales, one of Australia’s most important art institutions, faces an especially acute cultural challenge. Museum building in a real-estate obsessed city that Mark Twain called “superbly beautiful” — in the sunny heart of a proud “sporting nation” — often requires overcoming a barrage of negativity. The Sydney Opera House was loathed before it was loved, and the Modern has traveled a rough road already.

The debate around SANAA’s newly-opened $344 million expansion in some ways mirrors the one leading up to the (then $102 million AUS) Sydney Opera House in the late-1960s, which, at the time. centered on a discussion over the value of cultural investments that culminated in philosopher Peter Singer’s groundbreaking text Famine, Affluence, and Morality.

“Most of the rulers and commentators really do believe that ‘culture’ is a nonessential or luxury additive rather than part of the educational, civic, ethical and moral systems whereby a society might govern its core values and activities,” University of Canberra professor Ross Gibson told the Times in summary of that history.

The gallery has reported a total of 120,000 visitors in the first ten days of opening.

Sydney Opera House completes extensive concert hall renovation

2022-07-05T12:47:00-04:00

After two years of renovations, a room once blighted by poor acoustics and outdated machinery can now accommodate musicians previously turned away, with a push of a button

Ahead of its 50th birthday next year, the famed Jørn Utzon-designed Sydney Opera House is set to present the newly renovated concert hall which sought to remedy significant acoustics and accessibility issues.

Andrew Haveron, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's concertmaster, seemed more than pleased with the improved sound performance of the upgraded concert hall, telling The Guardian: "You can hear every minute detail now, every nuance — right up to the back row, everything pings through. It’s a miracle."

The project, led by ARM Architecture, commenced in early 2020 and will officially open to the public on July 20th.

Previously on Archinect: Sydney Opera House closes for its first major renovation

Sydney Opera House closes for its first major renovation

2020-03-13T16:52:00-04:00

[...] vast renovation project aimed at bringing all those innards up-to-date. The endeavor, budgeted at close to 300 million Australian dollars (nearly $200 million U.S.), culminated with the closure of the complex’s concert hall for the first time in its history. The hall has in the past been open 363 days a year, a point of pride, but it was shuttered in February for the start of a two-year upgrade.

Sydney's iconic Jørn Utzon-designed opera house will be turning 50 years old in 2023, and a massive renovation project has been long overdue.

Particular focus for the designers in charge of the job, Australian firm ARM Architecture, will be creating accessibility for visitors with mobility issues and improving the acoustic performance of the concert hall.

Rendering of the improved concert hall. Image: ARM Architecture.

"Performing arts venues are designed for the art that exists in their era. But artworks speak of their societies and as technology, construction and human endeavour progress, so do performance arts," states ARM Architecture on its website describing the renovation efforts.

"Over time, venues become technologically and artistically obsolete: they need to be calibrated to contemporary artistic thinking so that new works can be created and performed."

Construction is scheduled to be completed in mid 2021.

View this post on Instagram The first model of...

Sydney-based architect wants to create an "Instagram and selfie worthy" building

2019-11-13T20:00:00-05:00

Crown [Hotel] Sydney designer Chris Wilkinson also likened Sydney to a “21st century Venice on steroids” but warned we cannot simply rely on the harbor’s natural assets to keep tourists happy...The Crown Sydney at Barangaroo will be a landmark tower and feature Sydney’s most luxurious hotel.

"With the rise in popularity of selfies and Instagram moments these architectural landmarks are becoming more and more an important representation of the city," Wilkinson told The Daily Telegraph, in reference to the Sydney Opera house and other popular destinations.

The designer wants to "push the envelope" of the local architecture in hopes that he might be a contributor in positioning Sydney as a "leading architectural city."

#SailsNotSales: public protests after Sydney Opera House displays horse racing ad on its facade

2018-10-15T16:13:00-04:00

After a horse race ad was projected onto the structure’s iconic roof earlier this week, protestors took to the streets in objection to the commodification of their beloved building.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered in the evening hours of October 9 when the, usually, off-white iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House were used as a video projection canvas to promote a major upcoming horse race in New South Wales. The crowd booed and tried to interrupt the projection with a small army of flash lights, chanting "Whose house? Our house".

The protest meanwhile has drawn much wider circles, resulting in a Change.org petition with over 300,000 supporters against any future use of the UNESCO World Heritage Site as a promotional billboard and a rebuke from the Heritage Council of NSW.

Robots could soon maintain the Sydney Opera House's one million roof tiles

2016-12-27T19:43:00-05:00

One million brilliant white tiles clad the 65m-tall precast concrete roof [...] glazed ceramic tiles need to be hand-checked, or tapped, every five years by specialist engineers, who abseil down the roof “sails” looking for changes in their sound or appearance. Now, thanks to the combined efforts of the opera house, the Getty Foundation, the University of Sydney and the engineering and design group Arup, this expensive, vertigo- inducing process is a step closer to becoming a thing of the past.

Jørn Utzon's saga with the Sydney Opera house coming to the big screen

2016-06-08T13:12:00-04:00

With the working title Utzon, The Man Behind the Opera House, the film will tell the story of Danish architect Jørn Utzon, who was just 38 years old and relatively unknown when he won the international competition to design an opera house on Sydney’s Bennelong Point in 1957... The Sydney Opera House was completed by Australian architect Peter Hall – a handover which ostracised Hall from the architectural community, and which his family believe led to his ruin.

With a screenplay by Oscar-nominated Petter Skavlan, the film promises to get into some thorny emotional terrain. As producer Jan Marnell explains, “We have a world wonder. We have its creator – who wasn’t allowed to see his dream fulfilled. We have creativity versus bureaucracy and political manoeuvring ranging from friend to foe. We have an outstanding architect with streaks of megalomania and genius, and his vengeful opponents who plot to get him out of the country. What do they want? In the end, they want to take back what they believe should have been theirs in the first place.”

What else is going on with the Sydney Opera house?

Archinect Sessions #58: Last week’s architecture news. When it wasn’t so depressing.

2016-03-31T18:58:00-04:00

Collecting the most important news of the past week – that is, from the recording date's perspective of March 30th, the day before Zaha Hadid's sudden death – this episode brings stories on: the winning below-grade skyscraper (sinkscraper?) of eVolo's Skyscraper Competition; a long-lost Le Corbusier tapestry returning to the Sydney Opera House; another twist on co-habitation in the co-work startup, PodShare; Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects taking "revenge" on Charles Moore's Hood Museum; and our future of eating sandwiches while robots do our work.

We'll discuss the late Dame Zaha Hadid's legacy on next week's podcast.

Listen to episode 58 of Archinect Sessions, "Last week’s architecture news. When it wasn’t so depressing.":

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Jørn Utzon's final touch to the Sydney Opera House: a Le Corbusier tapestry

2016-03-29T16:52:00-04:00

[Utzon] wrote to his idol, boldly sending his designs of the Opera House and asking Le Corbusier to contribute in the form of “decoration, carpets and paintings”. His idol wrote back, and by October 1960 the young Utzon was the proud owner of a striking tapestry [...] The piece is now hanging behind glass in the far end of the Utzon-designed western foyer: a holding place while the Opera House continues the “decade of renewal” that will lead up to its 50th anniversary in 2023.

Another look at the tapestry, as it was hung in Jørn Utzon's home in Denmark:

Related on Archinect:

Editor's Picks #337

2013-10-14T23:46:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg, Editorial Manager for Archinect, traveled to Aedes Network Campus Berlin as a fly-on-the-wall, and reported back with 7 Lessons from the 3rd International Architectural Education Summit. These were; 1) The relevancy of the “Architect” is fleeting, 2) Kids today don’t know a thing about radicalism, 3) The powers that be are male, and architecture is a gender-divisive practice, 4) Architects need to be “strategically naive”, 5) Architectural authority is not above democratic authority (?), 6) Form before finances and lastly 7) The student has become the master (at least regarding computers).

In response Thayer-D opined "The main problem with architectural education isn't the lack of branding or radicalism, or even male dominated pedagogy (although that does suck). It's the lack of faith that tackling the myriad of issues associated with any given project will result in the most compelling and present project possible, regardless of one's aesthetic proclivi...

The Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon Celebrates Its 40th Anniversary

2013-10-09T18:45:00-04:00

If Jørn Utzon did not exist, we would have to invent him. His story, mostly the legend of that single and singular building, the Sydney Opera House, provides the enduring foundational myth for all contemporary architectural practice. Utzon is our sage Kenobi, our renegade Solo, our heroic Skywalker, all in one. He looked the part, too: an architect out of central casting in the Gary-Cooper-as-Howard-Roark mould, as tall as Rem Koolhaas, as beautiful as Jacques Herzog, as Danish as Bjarke Ingels.