Sydney Opera House

PAIS

Australia

ESTADO,PROVINCIA O REGION

Estado – New South Wales

NOMBRE

Sydney Opera House

AREA DE LA PROPIEDAD

5.8 hectareas

La casa de la Opera de Sydney es un gran trabajo de ingenio y creatividad humana, una obra de magnífica de arquitectura e ingeniería. Representa un conjunto tan grande de tantos campos trabajados y unidos de una manera impresionante, como lo no solamente la arquitectura e ingeniería, sino también de escultura, paisajismo y urbanismo.

Es una icono de como la arquitectura puede reconstruir la visión e identidad de una ciudad por medio de un edificio emblemático.

The Sydney Opera House is a great architectural work of the 20th century. Its values are best demonstrated through the specific characteristics of its architecture and will be discussed under the following headings: multiple strands of creativity, a great urban sculpture and a world famous iconic building.

The Sydney Opera House is one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia. It is featured in promotional materials prepared by Tourism New South Wales and Tourism Australia as a symbol of the city of Sydney and an emblem of Australia. More than four million people visit the site each year and it is estimated that this figure will increase by approximately 4.5 per cent per annum.

Utzon’s design represented an exceptional response to the challenges set by the 1956 international competition and clearly marked him out from the other entrants. His composition was based on a simple opposition of three groups of interlocking shell vaults resting on a heavy terraced platform. This arrangement helped to give the building a sculptural appearance that could be experienced and appreciated from land, sea and air as one moved around the building. The beautiful shells juxtaposed against the massive podium were radically new and particularly impressed the jury. Utzon’s composition also created a unique design for a concert hall that has been described as ‘original to the point of being revolutionary. Utzon’s unique design was acclaimed as the work of a genius in Australia and internationally but it also attracted critics. The competition jury was convinced that Utzon’s design was ‘the most original and creative submission … capable of being one of the great buildings of the world’ (New South Wales Government).

The Sydney Opera House, with its soaring white shells set upon a massive podium and encircled by harbour waters, is a spectacular sight—a monumental urban sculpture, from whatever angle it is viewed by day or night. Sited on a prominent peninsula in Sydney Harbour, with a backdrop of city skyscrapers and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the design of the Sydney Opera House expressed the genius of Jørn Utzon. The construction site was characterized by an outpouring of plans and drawings, the building and testing of numerous prototypes, and architects and engineers working together over months and even years to solve the many complex challenges that arose.

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 flourish.

Justification for inscription

The sculptural form of the Sydney Opera House has stimulated a richness of imagery and metaphors in popular culture and architectural history. It invites both playful and serious comparisons with all manner of things. American architectural historian Charles Jencks has analyzed the ‘superabundance’ of the building’s metaphorical associations, varying from the sublime to the humorous. These

include not only sails and shells, but also clouds, space ships, flowers unfolding, turtles making love, barnacles, the glistening skin of fish scales.

The success of the building can also be credited to the fundamental principles underlying its design: the creation of ‘an architecture that is predominantly experiential in character’ and an architecture that draws ‘inspiration from nature for

organic form’.

Inspiration

Utzon’s design was inspired by an eclectic suite of ideas from ancient through to modern times that included Mayan, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Islamic and western cultures. The influence of the ancient Mayan steppyramids in Mexico on the podium of the Sydney Opera House and the analogy of Chinese temples with their ‘floating’ roofs is well documented. Utzon’s use of ideas borrowed from other places and times is also apparent in many other aspects of the design.

Several architectural historians have highlighted Utzon’s genius in making the architecture and landscape appear as one. The use of tiling on the shells was inspired by the glistening domes and minarets rising above Islamic villages and also by Utzon’s studies in the art of Chinese and Japanese ceramics.

Living things as a source of inspiration also extended to the human body. Utzon described the contrast between the shells’ gloss tiles and their edging of matt tiles using the metaphor of ‘fingernails’ surrounded by skin (Messent 1997: 411).

His design created strong but beautiful architectural elements that were an admirable reflection of some of the ambitions of Modernism. These elements include the amazing geometric shell structure that provides the huge spans for public spaces uninterrupted by the confines of structural elements and the exceptional use of materials such as concrete and glass in their most organic and crafted forms.

Structural engineering and innovation

Utzon’s genius is manifested in the many outstanding elements of the Sydney Opera House. The podium and shells exemplify his masterful synthesis of the different architectural styles and aesthetics: the simple and gigantic geometric shapes of the shell structure which are emphatically modern but also have an organic origin. Amongst Utzon’s most remarkable achievements was his creation

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