nomination by the Government of Australia - Sydney Opera House

In the Sydney Opera House Jørn Utzon realised the great synthesis of earth and
sky, landscape and city, vista and intimacy, thought and feeling, in terms of a
unity of technological and organic form. Hence we may safely say that the Sydney
Opera House represents a masterpiece of human creative genius, and a most
significant step in the history of modern architecture (Norberg-Schulz 1996: 172).
Utzon’s design was an exceptional response to the
harbour setting. He drew heavily from his childhood
exposure to shipbuilding and his experiences as a sailor.
He also studied sea charts of Sydney Harbour, explored
the qualities of the promontory at Bennelong Point
from photographs and pictures, visited various harbour
environs in Denmark and Sweden and studied Greek
sites from aerial photographs. ‘It is a mark of his genius
that he so brilliantly interpreted the location, the light
and the landscape with its sculptural forms’ (Murray
2004: 1). The outstanding success of the building today
is in large part due to the way it is grounded in the
site: ‘It appears to rise out of the ground as a landform
almost as though it were a geological extension of the
earth itself’ (Frampton 2004: 21).
Utzon’s design was also a brilliant response to the
cultural purpose of a performing arts centre, a place
that excites the human imagination. It did not just
provide a new performing arts venue but offered the
dream of a cultural centre for the city, a place in which
the imaginative life and culture of the people might
fl ourish. It is today as Utzon envisaged it in 1959 when
he predicted: ‘The Sydney Opera House will perform
its own exciting drama on the harbour’ (Australian
Heritage Commission 1980: Appendix 1).
3.6
Figure 3.6 The Sydney Opera House is a brilliant response
to its maritime setting.
It is largely due to the cultural excitement generated
by its sculptural form that the Sydney Opera House is
one of the busiest performing arts centres in the world.
In 2004 the Sydney Opera House hosted over 1700
performances for more than one million theatre patrons,
while an estimated three million more people were
drawn to the site to closely examine its form. The Swiss
architectural historian Sigfried Giedion wrote:
One must see the Sydney Opera House
as a totality, and above all, how it fulfi ls its
human purpose. Its only goal is to prepare
the audience for a festival. Whoever visits
the theatre at Delphi in Greece, high above
the sanctuaries, must fi rst experience a long
slow climb up the winding sacred way. In
the theatre itself he fi rst experiences the full
majesty of the landscape. On a smaller scale,
something similar is attempted at Sydney
(Giedion 1965: 44).
One of the great architectural contributions of the
Sydney Opera House is the introduction at a civic
scale of the podium as a means of affording views
of the surrounding landscape. The podium offers
continuity with the peninsular landscape and also
functions as a ceremonial stage, a high altar to the arts
and culture of Australia.
3.7
Figure 3.7 The Sydney Opera House is also an outstanding
response to its cultural purpose.
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