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‘JORN
UTZON, the architect of the Sydney Opera House, has
never seen his masterpiece in the flesh since he left
Australia in 1966,” said our animated tour guide. As if
the design of the structure wasn’t interesting enough, I
found out that the history of the building’s
construction was even more colourful.
THE
surfaces of the Sydney Opera House are clad with tiles
in three shades: off-white, cream and beige. The tiles
are triple-glazed, which made the opera house one of the
first self-cleaning buildings in the world. Meant to
look like giant fish scales, Jorn Utzon got his
inspiration from Moroccan buildings which are usually
clad with tiles.
I
recently took a trip to
Australia,
where I felt like I was on another architectural
pilgrimage. Any architect you talk to knows what the
Sydney Opera House is, so it would’ve been a shame had I
not made the time to see it with my own eyes. When I
finally did, I failed to notice that my jaw had dropped
from the sight of the magnificent structure. It moved
me, causing me to stop in my tracks and gaze for what
seemed like an eternity in sheer awe.
The idea
of having an opera house in
Sydney
formed in the 1940s, when a world-class visiting
conductor came to the city to do a performance. He was
able to talk to the city officials and told them that if
they wanted to be a serious metropolitan, they needed to
have a place where culture can flourish; they needed an
opera house.
The
visiting conductor probably hit an insecure nerve among
the city politicians because after he left, they
organized an international competition for the design of
the Sydney Opera House. It was a very prestigious and
high-profile competition, as over 200 entries were
submitted from all over the world.
THE interiors of the big
performance hall have a soaring ceiling with a shape
that seems to spring from the ground, changing and
morphing into different configurations as it goes up.
The
entry of Jorn Utzon was initially thrown in the trash
can, as the majority of the judges said that it was too
different and too bold to be the new face of Sydney.
Luckily, there was one judge who came in late and saw
the entry in the can. He picked it up, spread it out and
showed it once again to the other judges: “This should
be our winner precisely because it is different!” Utzon,
an unknown Danish architect, won $5,000 and the
commission of the project. He moved his entire family to
Australia and set up an architectural office there to
oversee the construction of his work.
Originally, the budget for the opera house was $7
million and the time frame for the construction was
seven years. What happened was it took 14 years to
build, and about $102 million, which would be around
$1.2 billion in today’s dollar value.
Naturally, the people of
Sydney
reacted during the course of construction. They started
complaining that their tax money was being spent
unnecessarily to build an opera house that they didn’t
need in the first place. “We’re laid-back people. We’re
a country that loves the outback! We don’t need no opera
house!” I can almost imagine them saying back in the
’50s. The officials, typically unwilling to assume any
responsibility, blamed Utzon and then proceeded to take
him out of the picture and cut him out from the team. It
reached the point where the officials withheld his
salary. Finally, in 1966, the architect packed his bags
and went back to Denmark with his family, giving up the
fight for his masterpiece.
THE design of the Sydney
Opera House was derived from triangular sections of a
sphere. The architect was eating an orange one morning
when he suddenly thought of the “spherical solution.”
4
THE Sydney Opera
House consists of three sail-like structures sitting on
a podium.
After
Utzon’s departure, an Australian architect was asked to
take his place. The Australians didn’t know anything
about designing opera houses, so they were sent around
the world for three years to study the design of
different opera houses. They finished the opera house on
October 20, 1973, and was opened by no less than Queen
Elizabeth II herself.
The
design of the building is just as interesting as its
history. When Utzon was conceptualizing the design for
the competition, nothing was coming into his mind.
Luckily, one morning, as he was peeling an orange, he
realized that the forms of his design could actually be
derived from his breakfast! He then cut different
triangular shapes from the orange’s sphere and put it
together to come up with the final design of the opera
house, calling it his “spherical solution.” Maybe
architects should eat while designing, too. You’ll never
know where you might get inspiration from.
The
Sydney Opera House is consisted of three sail-like
structures sitting on a podium. The smallest structure
is a restaurant, and then the two are performance halls.
The sails have a very modern sculptural quality, and it
makes you wonder how they were able to put together a
structure as complicated as this at a time before
computers became an ubiquitous tool. The sails are made
of precast panels held together by tension rods
throughout the hollow portions of the structure. They
say that the opera house has more steel than the Sydney
Harbour Bridge nearby. The structure was actually put
together in manner of Lego, the famous toy product which
incidentally is also from
Denmark.
THE author fulfilling one
of his architectural pilgrimages.
One
would think that the exterior of the performance halls
was purely white. But upon closer inspection, I found
out that it is finished with tiles in three shades:
off-white, cream and beige. This makes sense, because if
it were too white, the structure would be too glaring.
The tiles are triple-glazed, which made the opera house
one of the first self-cleaning buildings in the world.
The dirt from its surfaces simply creeps down to the
drains whenever it rains. Meant to look like giant fish
scales, Utzon got his inspiration from Moroccan
buildings that are usually clad with tiles. The first
among the two performance halls is fondly called the
black theater because of its interiors, and is the
smaller one between the two. It is an opera and ballet
theater, with a backstage that can be lowered two levels
down. That is where the sets are changed, since the
space on the stage level is too small. In reality, there
are a lot of flaws in the black theater, and that is why
it is due for a renovation soon, with a budget of $500
million.
Then we
proceeded to the bigger performance hall. I thought that
I’d had my share of jaw-dropping moments that day, but I
was equally moved by the design of the interiors of the
second hall. It had a soaring ceiling with a shape that
seems to spring from the ground, changing and morphing
into different configurations as it goes up. Unlike the
other theater, this one doesn’t have a proscenium. There
are seats even at the back of the stage. There is no
need for microphones during performances at this theater
because the combination of hardwood and softwood used
for the interiors bounces all the sound coming from the
stage back to the audience. The organ is equally
impressive. It is the biggest mechanical organ in the
world. It has about 140 pipes, took 10 years to build,
two years to tune, and cost about $3 million.
The
three sail-like structures sit on a podium. Utzon got
his inspiration from a typical Mayan temple, where you
climb up a long set of stairs to get transported into a
different world. In the same manner, going up the stairs
of the podium was meant to symbolize your transportation
to a world of art and culture, leaving the stresses of
urban life behind. The heaviness of the podium also
complements the lightness of the sails. This is where
all the service spaces, such as the practice stages and
studios, are housed.
I guess
every high-profile structure has its own story. The
Eiffel Tower and the triangular entrance the Louvre were
loathed by Parisians. The Statue of Liberty was rejected
by the Americans when it first arrived. The Guggenheim
Museums, both in New York and Bilbao, received endless
negative criticisms. Now, all these structures are
weaved seamlessly into their respective cities. They now
stand as the foremost symbols for the people who once
rejected them—just like the Sydney Opera House.
You
may e-mail the author at design@buensalidoarchitects.com. |
