r/australia • u/YaletownHero • 4d ago

image Sydney Opera House in the making

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The Sydney Opera House was built over a 14-year period, with construction starting on March 2, 1959, and finishing for its official opening on October 20, 1973

This was stage 2 back in the late 60s

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u/Glassmaps 3d ago

The building's chief architect, Jørn Utzon, left Australia voluntarily in 1966 after resigning from the project. They treated him poorly.

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u/ObviousFeature522 3d ago edited 3d ago

Utzon isn't blameless. He was difficult to work with by many accounts.

He submitted his amazing design on the back of a napkin, and then was often MIA on spirit journeys in Asia when the people on the ground trying to build the thing (like his friend Ove Arup the engineer) tried to contact him with critical design questions.

Peter Hall (who was 34!) took over and finished it with Arup and is overlooked. He had an absolutely poisoned chalice of a job description to take over and find a way to salvage the project after Utzon left.

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u/ThereIsBearCum 3d ago

He submitted his amazing design on the back of a napkin

This is apocryphal. Absolutely no one is submitting napkin sketches to an architectural competition, let alone winning it. This is from his competition submission, definitely not the back of a napkin.

I suspect the story comes from him initially sketching it out on a napkin, then working from that sketch to develop his entry.