The architect of the Sydney Opera House never saw it finished.
Jørn Utzon's sketchy competition drawings won in 1957. The build ran ten years late and more than 1,300 percent over budget in real terms. Utzon resigned in 1966, left Australia and never returned, dying in 2008 without seeing the completed building that made him famous.
In 1955 the New South Wales government launched an international competition for an opera house on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour. It drew 233 entries from 32 countries. The jury, including the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, chose the Danish architect Jørn Utzon, whose drawings they admitted were almost diagrammatic but which they kept returning to. Utzon had won competitions before but had never seen one of his designs built.
The government pushed to start construction in 1959, before the design was finished, fearing funding or public opinion might turn. The problem was the roof. Utzon's soaring 'shells' had no defined geometry, and the engineers Ove Arup & Partners could not find an affordable way to build them. After at least twelve iterations, the team hit on a solution in 1961: make every shell a section of the same sphere, so the ribs could be precast in common moulds. Who thought of it first is disputed. The shells are clad in over a million tiles in glossy white and matte cream, arranged in a subtle chevron.
A new state government in 1965 criticised the costs and delays, and relations with Utzon collapsed over fees and control. He left the project in February 1966, calling the situation 'Malice in Blunderland'. An Australian team led by Peter Hall finished the interiors, scrapping much of Utzon's work; the main hall became a concert hall only, and the smaller theatre has proved cramped for big opera. The building opened in 1973 at a cost of 102 million dollars, against an original estimate of 7 million.
Late in life there was a reconciliation. In 1999 the Opera House appointed Utzon as a design consultant, a room was rebuilt to his design and named after him in 2004, and in 2003 he received the Pritzker Prize. In 2007 the building became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Utzon died in 2008, having never returned to see it.
Source: Wikipedia — Sydney Opera House · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
