The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings, and a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture.

Designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon and completed by an Australian architectural team headed by Peter Hall, the building was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973, 16 years after Utzon's 1957 selection as winner of an international design competition. The Government of New South Wales, led by the premier, Joseph Cahill, authorised work to begin in 1958 with Utzon directing construction. The government's decision to build Utzon's design is often overshadowed by circumstances that followed, including cost and scheduling overruns as well as the architect's ultimate resignation.

The building and its surrounds occupy the whole of Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove, adjacent to the Sydney central business district and the Royal Botanic Garden, and near to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The building comprises multiple performance venues, which together host over 1,800 performances annually, attended by more than 1.4 million people. Performances are presented by numerous performing artists, with many resident companies such as Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. As one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia, the site is visited by more than ten million people annually, The building is managed by the Sydney Opera House Trust, an agency of the New South Wales State Government.

In 2007, the Sydney Opera House became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, having been listed on the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate since 1980, the National Trust of Australia register since 1983, the City of Sydney Heritage Inventory since 2000, the New South Wales State Heritage Register since 2003, and the Australian National Heritage List since 2005. The Opera House was also a finalist in the New 7 Wonders of the World campaign list.

Description

The facility features a modern expressionist design, with a series of large precast concrete "shells", each composed of sections of a sphere of radius, forming the roofs of the structure, set on a monumental podium. The building covers of land and is long and wide at its widest point. It is supported on 588 concrete piers sunk as much as below sea level. The highest roof point is 67 metres above sea-level which is the same height as that of a 22-storey building. The roof is made of 2,194 pre-cast concrete sections, which weigh up to 15 tonnes each.

Although the roof structures are commonly referred to as "shells" (as in this article), they are precast concrete panels supported by precast concrete ribs, not shells in a strictly structural sense. Though the shells appear uniformly white from a distance, they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern composed of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours: glossy white and matte cream. The tiles were manufactured by the Swedish company Höganäs AB which generally produced stoneware tiles for the paper-mill industry.

Apart from the tile of the shells and the glass curtain walls of the foyer spaces, the building's exterior is largely clad with aggregate panels composed of pink granite quarried at Tarana. Significant interior surface treatments also include off-form concrete, Australian white birch plywood supplied from Wauchope in northern New South Wales, and brush box glulam.

Performance venues and facilities

left|thumb|The main Concert Hall

left|thumb|Joan Sutherland Theatre interior

left|thumb|The Bennelong Restaurant, located at the southernmost sailThe Sydney Opera House includes a number of performance venues:

  • Concert Hall: With 2,679 seats, the home of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and used by a large number of other concert presenters. It contains the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ, the largest mechanical tracker action organ in the world, with over 10,000 pipes.
  • Joan Sutherland Theatre: A proscenium theatre with 1,507 seats, the Sydney home of Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet. Until 17 October 2012 it was known as the Opera Theatre.
  • Drama Theatre: A proscenium theatre with 544 seats, used by the Sydney Theatre Company and other dance and theatrical presenters.
  • Playhouse: A non-proscenium end-stage theatre with 398 seats.
  • Studio: A flexible space with 280 permanent seats (some of which can be folded up) and a maximum capacity of 400, depending on configuration.
  • Utzon Room: A small multi-purpose venue for parties, corporate functions and small productions (such as chamber music performances).
  • Yallamundi Rooms: A function space hosting up to 400 people, often used for weddings or business conferences.
  • Outdoor Forecourt: A flexible open-air venue with a wide range of configuration options, including the possibility of utilising the Monumental Steps as audience seating, used for a range of community events and major outdoor performances.

History

Origins of the project

Site selection

thumb|Bennelong Point with tram depot in the 1920s (top left-hand side of photograph), during the building of [[Sydney Harbour Bridge (foreground)|left]]

Planning began in the late 1940s when Eugene Goossens, the Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music, lobbied for a suitable venue for opera and orchestral performance. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra's performance home, the Sydney Town Hall, was not considered large enough. By 1954, Goossens succeeded in gaining the support of New South Wales Premier Joseph Cahill, who called for designs for a dedicated opera house. It was also Goossens who insisted that Bennelong Point be the site: Cahill had wanted it to be on or near Wynyard railway station in the northwest of the central business district.

Architecture competition 1955–1957

An international design competition with a grand prize of 5,000 Australian pounds was launched by Cahill on 13 September 1955 and received 233 entries, representing architects from 32 countries. The criteria specified a large hall seating 3,000 and a small hall for 1,200 people, each to be designed for different uses, including full-scale operas, orchestral and choral concerts, mass meetings, lectures, ballet performances, and other presentations.

left|thumb|[[Jørn Utzon's initial sketches in 1957]]

The jury for the competition were: Professor Henry Ashworth (University of Sydney), Cobden Parkes (New South Wales Government Architect); Professor Leslie Martin (Professor of Architecture of Cambridge University and architect of Royal Festival Hall 1951) and Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen.

The winner, announced in Sydney on 29 January 1957, Utzon's design was inspired by natural shapes, most notably those of bird wings, clouds, shells, walnuts, rivers and palm leaves.

The runner-up was a Philadelphia-based team assembled by Robert Geddes and George Qualls, both teaching at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design. They brought together a band of Penn faculty and friends from Philadelphia architectural offices, including Melvin Brecher, Warren Cunningham, Joseph Marzella, Walter Wiseman, and Leon Loschetter. Geddes, Brecher, Qualls, and Cunningham went on to found the firm GBQC Architects.

Utzon visited Sydney in 1957 to help supervise the project. His office moved to Palm Beach, Sydney in February 1963.

Utzon received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, architecture's highest honour, in 2003. The Pritzker Prize citation read:

Design development and construction timeline

Preparation of site

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot, occupying the site on the original Fort Macquarie at the time of these plans, was demolished in 1958 and construction began in March 1959. The Opera House was built in four stages: stage I (1957–1959) was planning out the building; stage II (1959–1963) consisted of building the upper podium; stage III (1963–1967) the construction of the outer shells, based upon the image of whales breaching the water; stage IV (1967–1973) interior design and construction.

Stage I: Podium

Stage I started on 2 March 1959 with the construction firm Civil & Civic, monitored by the engineers Ove Arup & Partners. The government had pushed for work to begin early, fearing that funding, or public opinion, might turn against them. But Utzon had still not completed the final designs. Major structural issues still remained unresolved. By 23 January 1961, work was running 47 weeks behind,

Stage II: Roof

<gallery mode="packed" heights="150">

File:SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE under construction and ferries including BELLUBERA and KARINGAL 1962.tif|Podium structure complete, 1962

File:SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE under construction 1965.tif|Shells structure,

File:SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE under construction circa 1965.tif|Roof and shell structure,

File:Sydney Opera House construction 1968.jpg|Tiles complete,

</gallery>

The shells of the competition entry were originally of undefined geometry, but, early in the design process, the "shells" were perceived as a series of parabolas supported by precast concrete ribs. However, Ove Arup & Partners were unable to find an acceptable solution to constructing them. The formwork for using in-situ concrete would have been prohibitively expensive, and, because there was no repetition in any of the roof forms, the construction of precast concrete for each individual section would possibly have been even more expensive.

thumb|right|Sydney Opera House shell ribs

thumb|right|The glazed ceramic tiles of the Sydney Opera House

From 1957 to 1963, the design team went through at least 12 iterations of the form of the shells trying to find an economically acceptable form (including schemes with parabolas, circular ribs and ellipsoids) before a workable solution was completed.

The design work on the shells involved one of the earliest uses of computers in structural analysis, to understand the complex forces to which the shells would be subjected. The computer system was also used in the assembly of the arches. The pins in the arches were surveyed at the end of each day, and the information was entered into the computer so the next arch could be properly placed the following day.

In mid-1961, the design team found a solution to the problem: the shells all being created as sections from a sphere. This solution allows arches of varying length to be cast in a common mould, and a number of arch segments of common length to be placed adjacent to one another, to form a spherical section. With whom exactly this solution originated has been the subject of some controversy. It was originally credited to Utzon. Ove Arup's letter to Ashworth, a member of the Sydney Opera House Executive Committee, states: "Utzon came up with an idea of making all the shells of uniform curvature throughout in both directions." Peter Jones, the author of Ove Arup's biography, states that "the architect and his supporters alike claimed to recall the precise eureka moment ...; the engineers and some of their associates, with equal conviction, recall discussion in both central London and at Ove's house."

He goes on to claim that "the existing evidence shows that Arup's canvassed several possibilities for the geometry of the shells, from parabolas to ellipsoids and spheres." It is unlikely that the truth will ever be categorically known, but there is a clear consensus that the design team worked very well indeed for the first part of the project and that Utzon, Arup, and Ronald Jenkins (partner of Ove Arup and Partners responsible for the Opera House project) all played a very significant part in the design development.

As Peter Murray states in The Saga of the Sydney Opera House:

thumb|The shells of the Opera House at night, viewed from the south

The immensely complex design and construction of the shells was completed by Hornibrook, who were also responsible for construction in Stage III. Hornibrook manufactured the 2400 precast ribs and 4000 roof panels in an on-site factory and also developed the construction processes.

Ove Arup and Partners' site engineer supervised the construction of the shells, which used an innovative adjustable steel-trussed "erection arch" (developed by Hornibrook's engineer Joe Bertony) to support the different roofs before completion. along with their impression of Utzon's designs being impractical, this ultimately led to his resignation in 1966 (see below).

The cost of the project so far, even in October 1966, was still only A$22.9&nbsp;million, less than a quarter of the final $102&nbsp;million cost. However, the projected costs for the design were at this stage much more significant.

thumb|The Concert Hall prior to renovations in 2020

The second stage of construction was progressing toward completion when Utzon resigned. His position was principally taken over by Peter Hall, who became largely responsible for the interior design. Other persons appointed that same year to replace Utzon were E. H. Farmer as government architect, D. S. Littlemore and Lionel Todd.

Following Utzon's resignation, the acoustic advisor, Lothar Cremer, confirmed to the Sydney Opera House Executive Committee (SOHEC) that Utzon's original acoustic design allowed for only 2,000 seats in the main hall and further stated that increasing the number of seats to 3,000 as specified in the brief would be disastrous for the acoustics. According to Peter Jones, the stage designer, Martin Carr, criticised the "shape, height and width of the stage, the physical facilities for artists, the location of the dressing rooms, the widths of doors and lifts, and the location of lighting switchboards."

Significant changes to Utzon's design

thumb|The foyer of the Joan Sutherland Theatre, showing the internal structure and steel framing of the glass curtain walls; the final constructions were modified from Utzon's original designs

thumb|The foyer of the Concert Hall

  • The major hall, which was originally to be a multipurpose opera/concert hall, became solely a concert hall, called the Concert Hall. The minor hall, originally for stage productions only, incorporated opera and ballet functions and was called the Opera Theatre, later renamed the Joan Sutherland Theatre. As a result, the Joan Sutherland Theatre is inadequate to stage large-scale opera and ballet. A theatre, a cinema and a library were also added. These were later changed to two live drama theatres and a smaller theatre "in the round". These now comprise the Drama Theatre, the Playhouse and the Studio respectively. These changes were primarily because of inadequacies in the original competition brief, which did not make it adequately clear how the Opera House was to be used. The layout of the interiors was changed, and the stage machinery, already designed and fitted inside the major hall, was pulled out and largely thrown away, as detailed in the 1968 BBC TV documentary Autopsy on a Dream, which "chronicles the full spectrum of controversy surrounding the construction of the Sydney Opera House".
  • Externally, the cladding to the podium and the paving (the podium was originally not to be clad down to the water, but to be left open).
  • The construction of the glass walls: Utzon was planning to use a system of prefabricated plywood mullions, but a different system was designed to deal with the glass.
  • Utzon's plywood corridor designs, and his acoustic and seating designs for the interior of both major halls, were scrapped completely. His design for the Concert Hall was rejected as it only seated 2000, which was considered insufficient. The Concert Hall has a very high roof, leading to a lack of early reflections onstage—perspex rings (the "acoustic clouds") hanging over the stage were added shortly before opening in an (unsuccessful) attempt to address this problem.

Completion and cost

The Opera House was formally completed in 1973, having cost $102&nbsp;million. H.R. "Sam" Hoare, the Hornibrook director in charge of the project, provided the following approximations in 1973:

Stage I: podium Civil & Civic approximately $5.5m.

Stage II: roof shells MR Hornibrook approximately $12.5m.

Stage III: completion MR Hornibrook $56.5m.

Separate contracts: stage equipment, stage lighting and organ $9.0m. Fees and other costs: $16.5m.

The original cost and scheduling estimates in 1957 projected a cost of £3,500,000 ($7&nbsp;million) and completion date of 26 January 1963 (Australia Day).

Utzon and his resignation

thumb|The building illuminated at night

Before the Sydney Opera House competition, Jørn Utzon had won seven of the 18 competitions he had entered but had never seen any of his designs built. Utzon's submitted concept for the Sydney Opera House was almost universally admired and considered groundbreaking. The Assessors Report of January 1957 stated:

For the first stage, Utzon worked successfully with the rest of the design team and the client, but, as the project progressed, the Cahill government insisted on progressive revisions. They also did not fully appreciate the costs or work involved in design and construction. Tensions between the client and the design team grew further when an early start to construction was demanded despite an incomplete design. This resulted in a continuing series of delays and setbacks while various technical engineering issues were being refined. The building was unique, and the problems with the design issues and cost increases were exacerbated by commencement of work before the completion of the final plans.

After the 1965 election of the Liberal Party, with Robert Askin becoming Premier of New South Wales, the relationship of client, architect, engineers and contractors became increasingly tense. Askin had been a "vocal critic of the project prior to gaining office." His new Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, was even less sympathetic. Elizabeth Farrelly, an Australian architecture critic, wrote that: