Sydney Opera

The Sydney Opera House is a fabulous construction located in the city of the same name, Sydney (in Australia ). Its construction was designed under the inspiration of abstract art and it is a huge building dedicated to holding events of opera, theater, piano, symphonies, among other works of an artistic nature. The work was inaugurated on October 20, the year 1973 by Queen Elizabeth II , and launched the ceremony spectacular fireworks as he ran Ninth Symphony of Beethoven .

Summary

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• 1 Origin
• 2 Description
  • 1 Artistic value
  • 2 Symbolic value
  • 3 Technical Value
• 3 Architecture
• 4 Construction
• 5 Technical data
• 6 World Heritage Site
  • 1 Selection criteria
  • 2 Integrity and authenticity
  • 3 Protection and management requirements
• 7 Sources

Origin

In the late 1940s , the director of the Sydney Conservatory of Music argued that the city needs a building for major productions. In 1954 , Eugene Goossens obtained the support of the Australian Prime Minister for its construction. The chosen location was the Bennelong Point peninsula, on Sydney Harbor. On 13 September as as 1955A competition was launched to which 222 projects from 28 countries were submitted. The winner was Jørn Utzon, a 38-year-old architect from Denmark. Its initial budget was $ 7 million, below the estimated costs of the second and third prize winners ($ 10.8 million and $ 15.6 million). Jørn Utzon did not present a finished project, but some designs and diagrams. The project was much more complex than estimated, at times (years) they even doubted that it could be built, since it led architects and engineers to the limits of the technology of those years. The conflicts generated by the delays and cost overruns ended with the architect’s resignation. On October 20, 1973, almost 17 years after Utzon’s project was chosen, the Sydney Opera House was inaugurated,

Description

The Sydney Opera House – or Sydney Opera House – is without a doubt the symbol par excellence of Australia. It is located in the city of Sydney. The Sydney Opera House is also one of the most famous buildings of the 20th century . It was designed by the Danish architect Jørn Utzon in 1957 and inaugurated in 1973. The building is unique in all its angles, the roof is 67 meters high, it has 27,000 tons of Swedish tiles, and more than 1,000,000 pieces. 4.5 million visits per year.

The Sydney Opera House has four main auditoriums for Opera, dance, concerts and theater. It holds more than 2,400 events annually, making it not only an impressive building, but also a reference for art. The Sydney Opera House was declared a World Heritage Site in 2007. It is home to the Opera Australia Company, the Sydney Theater Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

Artistic value

When traveling to the Sydney Opera House, you can see a large-scale work of art. The Sydney Opera House was made with an abstract vision of the reality of expressionist art.

Symbolic value

The Sydney Opera House is Australia’s iconic symbol. It is a reference point for those who go on tourism to Australia. That is why it has an important symbolic value.

Technical value

This magnificent construction with its thousands of rooms and its avant-garde design exceptionally combines engineering and architecture with art, which is why it is of great technical value.

Architecture

The creator of the Sydney Opera House wins the architectural equivalent of the novice award. The Danish Jorn Utzon won the Pritzker Prize for architecture, considered the Nobel Prize for this discipline, for having designed the famous Sydney Opera House. Madrid is the headquarters where on May 20 the eldest son of the architect Utzon will collect the award, endowed with $ 100,000. The Pritzker jury called the Sydney Opera House “one of the most symbolic buildings of the 20th century”, a majestic building that stands like an immense sail in the port of the Australian metropolis.

“It is a masterpiece, an image of great beauty now known throughout the world, a symbol not only of a city but of an entire country,” added the jury. Utzon, who turns 85 on Wednesday, abandoned the opera project in 1966 after a notorious dispute with the New South Wales state government and a barrage of criticism from the public, who found the building too abstract. The opera took seven years to complete and its creator never returned to Australia to admire what is now recognized as a landmark architectural work.

Utzon is the 27th winner of this accolade, created in 1979 by the Chicago-native Pritzker family. The chairman of the jury, Lord Rothschild, indicated that the Danish architect has worked “throughout his life with ardor, intelligence and serenity without a single dissonant note”. The jury noted that the award-winning creativity “is rooted in history and is inspired by the Mayan, Chinese, Japanese and Islamic cultures, as well as their Scandinavian heritage.” Utzon’s sons Jan and Kim have their architecture studio in the Danish town of Haarby.

The Sydney Opera House, the final form of which emerged after a study of a number of alternatives to the original project. Finally, to form each of the shells, “triangles” cut out of the same sphere were used, that is to say that the profile of each of the triangles were arcs of a circle of the same radius. Each of these triangles is built from prestressed steel ribs that are in turn supported by metal arches that have been previously assembled.

Although Utzon designed an impressive series of buildings, mainly in Denmark, his name will always be associated with the Sydney Opera House, whose white profile, similar to the sail of a boat, is known to many. Completed in 1973 and currently renovated on the inside, the Opera House helped establish Sydney’s reputation as an evolving international city. As in the case of the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Guggenheim in Bilbao , architect Utzon’s design demonstrated the power of individual constructions to reshape the image of older industrial cities as contemporary cultural centers.

The Sydney Opera House is the world’s busiest performing arts center. Although its construction took place during the sixties, the Opera helped to set the debate on the value of monumental buildings. For some critics, Utzon’s design symbolized the subordination of functional efficiency to formal expression. Although the building was frequently compared to the Taj Mahal , the comparison was not always complimentary.

Admired for its prominent white silhouette, the Opera also reflects Utzon’s interest in the platform, or podium, as an expressive urban hallmark. In 1972, Utzon was invited to design a second monumental work, the Kuwait National Assembly, which was completed in 1982. Like the one in Sydney , it shows steep, curvilinear roofs, although the curves are concave. Among Jörn Utzon’s other notable projects are the Kingo Housing Estate (1956-58), the Fredensborg Housing Estate (1959-62), Bagsvaerd Church (1973-76), and the Skagen Nature Center (2001), all in Denmark. ; and the Dunkers Cultural Center (2002) in Halsingborg, Sweden .

Utzon’s sons Jan, 58, and Kim, 46, inherited the Utzon Architects studio. Previous winners of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture include Richard Meier, Renzo Piano, and Rem Koolhaas. This year, the jury was made up of Lord Rothschild, Frank Gehry, Ada Louise Huxtable, Carlos Jiménez, the Argentine architect Jorge Silvetti , Giovanni Agnelli (who died last January), and Bill Lacy as executive director.

Building

The Sydney Opera House is an expressionist construction designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon, made up of a series of large prefabricated shells, each taken from the same hemisphere, that form the vaults of the structure. The Opera House covers 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres of land). It is 183 meters (605 feet) long and around 120 meters (388 feet) at its widest point. It is supported by 580 pillars sunk to a depth of 25 meters below sea level. Its power supply has a capacity equivalent to the electricity consumption of a city of 25,000 people.

The energy is distributed by 645 kilometers of cable. The rooftops of the theater are covered with 1.056 million glossy white and cream tiles in a matte finish made in Sweden, which in the distance appear only white. They are made to be self-cleaning, but periodic cleaning and replacement maintenance is still performed. The two largest groups of vaults that make up the ceiling of the theater each belong to the Concert Hall and the Opera House. The other rooms are roofed by the smallest groupings of vaults. The shell shape was chosen to lighten the internal structure of weight, rising from the low spaces of the entrance, over the seating areas, until reaching the highest boxes.

A much smaller group of the shell system is found to one side of the entrances and the monumental staircase and the Bennelong restaurant. Although the rooftop structures of the Sydney Opera House are commonly referred to as shells (as in this article), they are in fact not vaults in the architectural sense of the word, as they are pre-cast panels supported by pre-cast ribs. The competition for the construction of the Sydney Opera House began on September 13, 1955 and received a total of 233 projects from 32 different countries seeking a prize consisting of $ 100,000.

The minimum criteria specified that the projects should contain were a large room with a capacity for 3,000 seats and a smaller room for about 1,200 seats, each of the designs had to also contain spaces for large operas, orchestral concerts, choirs, etc. conferences, meetings, performances of different kinds. The winning design was announced in 1957 , and the project by Jørn Utzon, a Danish architect, was the winner. The American architect Eero Saarinen of Finnish origin, who served on the jury of the Sydney Opera House Commission, was instrumental in the selection of Jørn Utzon’s design. Utzon arrived in Sydney in 1957 to help oversee the project and the construction of the building completed in 1973.

Technical data

It occupies 1.8 hectares of land. Its 183 meters high and 120 meters long are the maximum measurements of this site. It is supported on 580 pieces of concrete that are sunk 25 meters below sea level. The local power generation plant could provide power to a population of 25,000 people, and is distributed by 645 kilometers of cable.

World Heritage

For its architectural and cultural values both, the Sydney Opera House was included in the List of World Heritage of UNESCO in the year 2007 .

Selection criteria

• Criterion (i): The Sydney Opera House is a great architectural work of the 20th century . It represents various strands of creativity in its architectural form and structural design; It is a large urban sculpture set in an exceptional maritime landscape and a world famous iconic building.

Integrity and authenticity

All elements necessary to express the values ​​of the Sydney Opera House are included within the boundaries of the zone and the nominated buffer zone; this ensures the full representation of its meaning as an architectural object of great beauty in its aquatic environment. The Sydney Opera House continues to serve as a world-class center for the performing arts. The Conservation Plan specifies the need to balance the functions of the building as an architectural monument and as a state of the performing arts center, thus preserving its authenticity of use and function. The attention paid to retaining the authenticity of the building culminated in the Utzon Conservation Plan and design principles. The Sydney Opera House was included on the National Heritage List in 2005under the Law of Protection of Environment and Conservation of Biodiversity in 1999 , and in the Register of the Patrimony of the State of New South Wales on in 2003 under the Heritage Act 1977 . Their inclusion in these lists implies that any proposed measures to be taken within or outside the limits of a National Heritage site or a World Heritage property that may have a significant impact on heritage values ​​is prohibited without the approval of the Minister. of Environment and Heritage. A buffer zone has been established.

Protection and management requirements

The current state of conservation is very good. The property is maintained and maintained through regular and rigorous repair and upkeep programs. The management system of the Sydney Opera House takes into account a wide range of measures foreseen in planning and legislation on heritage and policies of both the Government of Australia and the Government of New South Wales. The Sydney Opera House Management Plan, Conservation Plan, and Utzon Design Principles together provide the normative framework for the conservation and management of the Sydney Opera House.