arCHitECT -jORn utZOn

1
arCHitECT -jORn utZOn

• Swaraj singh baghel
• B.Arch IV Year
• En No. 071034

2
LifE anD caREer

• Utzon was born in Copenhagen, the son of a naval
  engineer, and grew up in Denmark. From 1937 he
  attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine
  Arts where he studied under Kay Fisker and Steen
  Eiler Rasmussen. After graduating in 1942, he
  went to Sweden to work for Gunnar Asplund. After
  the end of World War II and the German Occupation
  of Denmark, he returned to Copenhagen. In 1946 he
  visited Alvar Aalto in Helsinki. From 194748 he
  travelled in Europe in 1949 in the United
  States and Mexico. In America he attended Frank
  Lloyd Wright's school in Arizona. In 1950 he
  established his own studio in Copenhagen.

3

• A Few Works

4
prITzKEr prIZe fOR sYDneY OPERA HOUSE..

• In 1957 he unexpectedly won the competition to
  design the Sydney Opera House. Although he had
  won six other architectural competitions
  previously, the Opera House was his first
  non-domestic project. The designs he submitted
  were also little more than preliminary drawings.
  One of the judges,Eero Saarinen, described it as
  "genius" and declared he could not endorse any
  other choice.
• Utzon refined his original conceptual designs for
  the shells over several years. One particular
  difficulty was that the Cahill government was so
  eager to commence the project that they arranged
  for the engineers, Ove Arup and Partners, to put
  out tenders for the podium without adequate
  working drawings this work actually began in
  1959 while Utzon was still in Denmark working on
  the final plans.

5
CONCEPT

• The extraordinary structure of the shells
  themselves represented a puzzle for the
  engineers. This was not resolved until 1961, when
  Utzon himself finally came up with the solution.
  He replaced the original elliptical shells with a
  design based on complex sections of a sphere.
  Utzon says his design was inspired by the simple
  act of peeling an orange the 14 shells of the
  building, if combined, would form a perfect
  sphere. Although Utzon had spectacular,
  innovative plans for the interior of these halls

6
DeSCrIPtiON..

• he Sydney Opera House is a modern expressionist
  design, with a series of large precast concrete
  "shells", each composed of sections of
  a sphere of 75.2 metre (246 ft 8½ in) radius ,
  forming the roofs of the structure, set on a
  monumental podium. The building covers 1.8
  hectares (4.5 acres) of land and is 183 metres
  (605 ft) long and 120 metres (388 ft) wide at its
  widest point. It is supported on 588 concrete
  piers sunk as much as 25 metres below sea level.
• Although the roof structures of the Sydney Opera
  House are commonly referred to as "shells" (as
  they are in this article), they are in fact not
  shells in a strictly structural sense, but are
  instead precast concrete panels supported by
  precast concrete ribs.The shells are covered in a
  subtle chevron pattern with 1,056,006 glossy
  white- and matte-cream-coloured Swedish-made
  tiles from Höganäs AB,though, from a distance,
  the shells appear a uniform white.
• 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 in 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
• Of the two larger spaces, the Concert Hall is
  located within the western group of shells, and
  the Opera Theatre within the eastern group. The
  scale of the shells was chosen to reflect the
  internal height requirements, with low entrance
  spaces, rising over the seating areas and up to
  the high stage towers. The smaller venues (the
  Drama Theatre, the Playhouse, and The Studio) are
  located within the podium, beneath the Concert
  Hall. A smaller group of shells set to the
  western side of the Monumental Steps houses the
  Bennelong Restaurant. The podium is surrounded by
  substantial open public spaces, of which the
  large stone-paved forecourt area with the
  adjacent monumental steps is also regularly used
  as a performance space.

7
drAWinGs...biRD eyE viEW
8
sITe PLaN..AnD hoW tO reACh
9

• The Sydney Opera House was made a UNESCO World
  Heritage Site on 28 June 2007. It is one of the
  20th century's most distinctive buildings and one
  of the most famous performing arts centres in the
  world.
• The Sydney Opera House is situated on Bennelong
  Point in Sydney Harbour, close to the Sydney
  Harbour Bridge. It sits at the northeastern tip
  of the Sydney central business district (the
  CBD), surrounded on three sides by the harbour
  (Sydney Cove and Farm Cove) and neighboured by
  the Royal Botanic Gardens.

10
pLAns.
11
elEVaTIon.
12
scIOgrAPHy.
13
sECtioNS.
14
3-D viEw
15
Performance venues and facilities inside the
opera house

• The Opera House houses the following performance
  venues
• The Concert Hall, with 2,678 seats, is the home
  of the Sydney Symphony 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.
• The Opera Theatre, a proscenium theatre with
  1,507 seats, is the Sydney home of Opera
  Australia and The Australian Ballet.
• The Drama Theatre, a proscenium theatre with 544
  seats, is used by the Sydney Theatre Company and
  other dance and theatrical presenters.
• The Playhouse, an end-stage theatre with 398
  seats.
• The Studio, a flexible space with a maximum
  capacity of 400 people, depending on
  configuration.
• The Utzon Room, a small multi-purpose venue,
  seating up to 210.
• The 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.
• Other areas (for example the northern and western
  foyers) are also used for performances on an
  occasional basis. Venues at the Sydney Opera
  House are also used for conferences, ceremonies,
  and social functions.

16
CONSTRUCTION HISTORY
17
orIGinS..

• Planning for the Sydney Opera House began in the
  late 1940s, when Eugene Goossens, the Director of
  the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, lobbied
  for a suitable venue for large theatrical
  productions. The normal venue for such
  productions, theSydney Town Hall, was not
  considered large enough. By 1954, Goossens
  succeeded in gaining the support of NSW
  Premier Joseph Cahill, who called for designs for
  a dedicated opera house. It was also Goossens who
  insisted that Bennelong Point be the site for the
  Opera House. Cahill had wanted it to be on or
  near Wynyard Railway Station in the northwest of
  the CBD.
• A design competition was launched by Cahill on 13
  September 1955 and received 233 entries,
  representing architects from 32 countries. The
  criteria specified a large hall seating 3000 and
  a small hall for 1200 people, each to be designed
  for different uses, including full-scale operas,
  orchestral and choral concerts, mass meetings,
  lectures, ballet performances and other
  presentations.The winner, announced in 1957,
  was Jørn Utzon, a Danish architect. According to
  legend the Utzon design was rescued from a final
  cut of 30 "rejects" by the noted Finnish
  architect Eero Saarinen. The prize was
  5,000. Utzon visited Sydney in 1957 to help
  supervise the project. His office moved to Sydney
  in February 1963.

18
deSIgN n COnstRUcTIon

• Stage I Podium
• Stage I commenced on 2 March 1959 by the
  construction firm Civil Civic, monitored by the
  engineers Ove Arup and Partners. The government
  had pushed for work to begin early, fearing that
  funding, or public opinion, might turn against
  them. However, Utzon had still not completed the
  final designs. Major structural issues still
  remained unresolved. By 23 January 1961, work was
  running 47 weeks behind, mainly because of
  unexpected difficulties (inclement weather,
  unexpected difficulty diverting stormwater,
  construction beginning before proper construction
  drawings had been prepared, changes of original
  contract documents). Work on the podium was
  finally completed in February 1963. The forced
  early start led to significant later problems,
  not least of which was the fact that the podium
  columns were not strong enough to support the
  roof structure, and had to be re-built.

19

• Stage II Roof
• 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, engineers Ove Arup and
  Partners were unable to find an acceptable
  solution to constructing them. The formwork for
  using in-situ concrete would have been
  prohibitively expensive, but, 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.

20
inTEriORs..

• 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, had
  the added function of opera and ballet to deal
  with and is called the Opera Theatre. As a
  result, the Opera 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.
• 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).

21
inTEriORs..

• 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. Utzon employed the acoustic
  consultant Lothar Cremer, and his designs for the
  major halls were later modelled and found to be
  very good. The subsequent Todd, Hall and
  Littlemore versions of both major halls have some
  problems with acoustics, particularly for the
  performing musicians. The orchestra pit in the
  Opera Theatre is cramped and dangerous to
  musicians' hearing. The Concert Hall has a very
  high roof, leading to a lack of early reflections
  onstageperspex rings (the "acoustic clouds")
  hanging over the stage were added shortly before
  opening in an (unsuccessful) attempt to address
  this problem

22
Few pictures of the opera house.
23
deATh.

• The Danish architect of the iconic Sydney Opera
  House, Jorn Utzon, died at the age of 90in the
  year 2008(29th nov).
• Utzon succumbed to a heart attack, while asleep
  at home in Denmark on Saturday.
• He was surrounded by family and had been ill for
  some time.
• He had not been doing well these past few days,
  since Thursday. He had been undergoing a series
  of operations . 

24
Thank you..For being a patient audience