The Sydney Opera House project, nearly two decades in the making, had in fact been dogged with controversy from the outset.
Who designed the Sydney Opera House?Īustralians, famed for wit as dry as their national outback country, no doubt appreciated this royal piece of understatement. The speech itself was not without irony: ‘I understand that its construction has not been totally without problems,’ the Queen said, referring to the majestic edifice before her. Wearing a silken dress of duck-egg blue and matching hat – ‘not unlike an inverted sail of the opera house’, one observer commented – the monarch gripped the pages of her script tightly as wind buffeted the platform. Jørn Utzon and Ove Arup with project engineer Povl Ahm discussing the roof structure in Utzon’s studio, 1959, Hellebaek, Denmark.(Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images)
The roof evolved from the freeform shape of the architect’s original sketch to the spherical geometry of the final design. In the quest to maintain Utzon’s original vision, Arup engineers developed as many as 12 different versions of a concrete roof design between 19. The search for a solution was driven by a close creative partnership between the architect and engineer team. The geometrically undefined curves of the roof needed to be developed in order for the building to be built.
Many contemporary critics in the profession considered it impossible to build. Utzon’s ambitious vision for the shape of the roof posed a huge number of structural engineering challenges. By March, the Arup engineering firm was formally appointed to the project team. On hearing of the appointment in February, Ove Arup sent Utzon a personal letter suggesting they collaborate. His design had no engineering consultation upon submission. In early 1957, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon won the competition for the Sydney Opera House design on the strength of powerful drawings - an expressive charcoal sketch showing a building with a dramatic roof composed of gravity-defying curves.
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