Location: Bennelong Point , Sydney, Australia
Architect: Jørn Utzon
Constructed: 1959 - 1973
14 Photographs
Every time I visit Sydney, I take a walk down to Bennelong Point and the Sydney Opera House and each time, I marvel at the unique vision and circumstances that gave rise to what is perhaps the most recognisable building in the world. It’s known as just the Opera House back home, a building at the heart of a nation, similar in stature to some of its other greatest natural treasures, like Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, the kangaroo, and a myriad of others.
I do not recall my first encounter with the shells of the Opera House but it must have been as a child on one of my first visits to Sydney. It’s so ubiquitous in Australian culture and media, that it just feels like it’s always been there. I recall Glenn Murcutt once explaining that great buildings are in a way, obvious, or inevitable, in that they respond to their context with an innate sense of belonging, like they were made for the place, and similarly the place for it. I personally cannot think of a building which is more obvious in this way, or better reflects what Glenn was trying to convey than the Opera House.
It is a remarkable building, even more so when you understand the tumultuous road that it took to completion. I tried to include more photos of the interior than the outside, as perhaps it is a side of the building not seen by most before, but one equally incredible in its resolution and vision, despite its torturous history. The scale and articulation of the geometry and form of the concrete shells is something that would be envied even in today’s world of design, assisted as we are now, by the power of computing. It’s even more remarkable to think that the whole thing was not only built without the aid of a computer, but designed by Utzon from a world away, without having ever visited the site.
A few years ago, I was in Sydney for a few weeks and was lucky enough to be staying near a ferry stop, so every day, was able to commute into Sydney on the ferry, passing by the white shells twice a day in all sorts of conditions and experiencing them, and the harbour, as those fortunate enough to live here do. I’ve always loved the building and wondered whether those who see it every day continue to marvel at it in the way I have over a lifetime.
I won’t try to list the intersecting reverberations that have spread like bouncing ripples through the world of architectural thought by this simple beautiful building, but instead, I will try to tell the same story through a simple analogy. If you know the complex topography of Sydney Harbour (if you don’t then perhaps take a look at it on Google Maps), then I might ask you to imagine how a giant stone thrown in the middle might cause a never-ending pattern of similarly intersecting ripples that would bounce off the edges and crash together as they continuously move around the inlets and bays formed by the millennia of geology and weather. To me, the influence of Utzon’s masterpiece seems something like this.
Each time I see a new cultural centrepiece building perched proudly in the middle of an ambitious cityscape, I can’t help but compare it to the Opera House, but I have to say I am yet to discover one which feels quite so suitable.
HWLK