Jørn Utzon

Architect Jørn Utzon is best known for his design of the Sydney Opera House, a building that transformed the identity of a nation to become the symbol of Australia, recognised the world over.

Sydney Opera House is a World Heritage-listed masterpiece of human creativity and one of the greatest buildings of the 20th century.

Like many architects, Utzon had initially entered the Australian competition for a national Opera House to exercise ideas. He was surprised to learn he had won.

The judging panel included eminent architects Eero Saarinen, from the United States, and the head of architecture at Cambridge University in the UK, Leslie Martin. The panel was supported by then New South Wales Premier, Joseph Cahill, who was instrumental in making the Opera House a reality.

Inspired by their confidence in his winning design, Utzon held fast to his ideals for a “perfect building”, delivering extraordinary and beautiful designs and solutions for both the external and internal spaces. Even as the program for the building and character of the original aspirations changed around him, Utzon would work to maintain these founding ideals.

However, Utzon's position would eventually become untenable and he was forced to resign, as he saw it, by circumstances involving the Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes.

Complex and fraught, the politics of Utzon's withdrawal and the subsequent completion of the building by a committee of architects including Peter Hall are explored in detail elsewhere.

Here you can explore the artistry inherent in Utzon's approach to architecture, the startling originality of his ideas, and his re-engagement with Sydney Opera House near the end of his life.

Eminent architects Leslie Martin and Eero Saarinen, either side of Utzon, meeting in London in 1957 to discuss next steps in the Sydney Opera House project, having selected Utzon’s as the winning design.

Saarinen's celebrated Kresge Auditorium, for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was completed in 1956, the year of the international competition for an Opera House in Sydney. Saarinen became one of four judges of this competition.

His Kresge Auditorium is defined by an elegant, thin-shell structure of reinforced concrete, one-eighth of a sphere rising to a height of 15 metres (50 feet), sliced away by sheer glass curtain walls so that it comes to earth on only three points.

The auditorium is defined by an elegant thin-shell structure of reinforced concrete, one-eighth of a sphere rising to a height of 50 feet, and sliced away by sheer glass curtain walls so that it comes to earth on only three points.

Saarinen's enthusiasm for Utzon’s design was directly related to a commission Saarinen had been working on for what would become his most famous building, the TWA Passenger Terminal at what is now known as John F Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York.

In 1954, at the beginning of the commercial jet era, the Port Authority of New York had given Trans World Airlines permission to develop a passenger terminal at Idlewild Airport (now JFK Airport). TWA commissioned Saarinen and Associates to design the terminal in 1956.

By the time of judging in 1957, Saarinen would have begun thinking about the form of his celebrated shell structure, which would resonate strikingly with Utzon's original submission drawings.

Another eminent American architect, Cesar Pelli, a young associate working on the TWA building, later recalled he had no doubt that the similar aesthetics between the two designs resonated strongly with Saarinen.

The cover of the Red Book, featuring a profile of the Sydney Opera House cut out freehand by Utzon.

Utzon was heavily influenced by natural form in his approach to design. This image is reminiscent of those found in biologist and mathematician D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's book, On Growth and Form, which was a favourite of Utzon's.

Sketches of the roof profile from the Red Book reminiscent of leaves and organic forms.

A freehand sketch of the roof profiles from the Red Book illustrates far more upright shell forms than those expressed in Utzon’s competition sketches.

These profiles illustrate the move away from the distinctly horizontal, thin concrete shells, a profile abandoned in the initial period of formulating the engineering of the building.

What is so striking about this sketch is how elegantly and economically Utzon captures the impression of the Sydney Opera House with his idiosyncratic, thick 6B design pencil.

The final profile of the Sydney Opera House, expressing spherical geometry, after more than three years of experimentation with parabolic and ellipsoid geometries and at least eight primary variations.

A page of sketches from the Yellow Book, illustrating Utzon's approval for the form of the side shells that bridge the main shells of the Sydney Opera House. (The Yellow Book presented the "Spherical Solution" – a final design rationale for the roof, alongside the glass wall designs and the most recent designs for the Major and Minor Halls.)

Utzon in 1962, holding his 6B design pencil.

Arguably Utzon's greatest design achievement in the legacy of his work on the Sydney Opera House was his innovative creation of the roof’s form using spherical geometry.

An early, pristine model of the newly devised spherical geometry for the roof of the Sydney Opera House.

Photographing the first model of the spherical roof geometry.

Utzon leaving the offices of the New South Wales Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, having declared his intention to withdraw from the project (1965)
by Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House

Despite the collective ambition and colossal effort demonstrated from the very beginning of the project of the Sydney Opera House, by 1965, disputes and disagreements had seriously fractured the project’s leadership. A change in the state government, from Labor under Premier Joe Cahill to Liberal under Premier Robert Askin, compounded the friction and brought with it a changing political will that, long before the building was finished, compelled Utzon to resign.

He would leave Australia in 1965, eight years before the Sydney Opera House opened, never to return to see his masterpiece finished.

There were many forms of protest against the government for, as the protesters saw it, the dismissal of Utzon from the project of the Sydney Opera House.

No one could have anticipated the immediate and intense reaction against then Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, for accepting Utzon's resignation. National and international associates, famous architects, friends and strangers alike called for his return and many supporters took to the streets in protest.

To some, the treatment meted out to Utzon was indicative of a wider social malaise then prevailing in Australia. His creative battles symbolised the increasing irrelevance of so many establishment values.

Broader ethical, social and political questions were being raised at the time, and alongside the generational division of sentiment about the Vietnam War, Utzon's treatment became another cause for tension and dissent.

In late 1998, another New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, wrote to Utzon asking if he would establish a set of design principles that would ensure his vision for the building would inform its evolution.

In 1999, 33 years after leaving Australia, and with the tumult of 1966 long behind him, Utzon once again signed a contract with the New South Wales government and re-engaged with Sydney Opera House.

In the three decades since his departure, Sydney Opera House had been host to tens of thousands of performances and millions of visitors. It had become the most recognised and esteemed symbol of Sydney, as well as the nation. Its cultural and architectural value is now beyond doubt.

Jørn Utzon with his son Jan after Utzon's re-engagement with Sydney Opera House (1999)
by Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House

While he saw no need to return to Australia, Utzon swiftly set about updating aspects of the building with the help of his son Jan. At the same time, prominent Sydney architect Richard Johnson was engaged to work with the Utzons and to develop a Venue Improvement Plan.

On publication of the Utzon Design Principles in 2002, the Carr Government committed $A69 million to the refurbishment plan. This included creation of the first interior space fully realised to Utzon's specifications. The Utzon Room celebrates the form of the Concourse beams that define the ceiling; its southern wall is glass, overlooking the harbour.

The north wall is dominated by a tapestry designed by Utzon, inspired by the music of Bach and Raphael's painting, The Procession to Calvary.

The Utzon Room is explored in detail in "The Master's Chamber" exhibit.

In 2003, Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the world's most prestigious architectural award. The judges recognised Sydney Opera House as “a masterpiece – Jørn Utzon's masterpiece”.

Architect Richard Weston, who worked with Utzon during the re-engagement process, observed: "Like most great works of art that achieve wide popularity its appeal is visceral and optical more than cerebral. A sublime flower with primitive roots, it is one of very few 20th-century buildings to be measured against the achievements of past civilisations."

Jørn Utzon died on 29 November 2008, at the age of 90.

On behalf of the family, Utzon’s son Jan wrote that in his father’s long and full life: "Nothing escaped his keen eye. He observed the world around him with extraordinary clearness. From all these sources of inspiration, be it the pyramids of Mexico, the temple compounds of China, the half-timbered farms of Denmark, the branch of a tree, the leaf on a flower, a stone from the beach, the pattern in the snow, the slant of the sunlight, from music, sculpture, paintings and the humanistic thinking by great philosophers, he created a world of his own, a legacy of great and modest buildings that are ours to enjoy, far beyond his lifetime."