A controversial documentary produced with BBC support on the then still-incomplete Sydney Opera House in 1968. The director had been a leading young journalist in Australia who covered the project from the beginning and who then went to work for the BBC n the UK. After architect Jorn Utzon resigned following an ugly politicisation of the project the documentary was produced, against the opposition of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), the BBC’s partner. The ABC was deeply complicit in Utzon’s departure because the organisation wanted the Opera House’s large hall for the exclusive use of its symphony orchestra, while Utzon’s whole design concept was for a multipurpose hall.. The ABC refused to show the documentary and it was later destroyed at the BBC. Only in recent years was a back-up copy found in a BBC storeroom but the soundtrack, featuring now legendary writer Bob Ellis as narrator had to be laboriously remastered.
In the documentary a number of prominent cultural identities, such as architect Harry Seidler and theatre producer Arthur Miller, appear. The documentary is a priceless peace of cultural product in its own right.
The young architect, Peter Hall, who took on the task of finishing the building, had met Utzon in Denmark at an early stage in the project, stayed with his family, and Utzon had tried hard to persuade him to work for him but Hall instead returned to Australia to work in a better paid role in the state architect’s office. Hall did some very respected major buildings but ultimately ended in a tragic personal state.
Renzo Piano
Renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano speaking about Utzon. Piano did a very nice project in central Sydney.
In another short video in the same Lousiana (a renewed art museum just north of Copenhagen) series, leading contemporary Danish architect Bjarke Ingels speaks about Utzon. The series is a dedication from 2018, when Utzon would have been 100.
Utzon’s son Jan at the Opera House with visitors in a very short video. He offers a nice insight into how inspiration can come in unexpected ways:
The Sydney Opera House Trust has a keen sense of how the building has developed such iconic status, and deep meaning to many, and has produced a series of short videos to tap such sentiments at various times in the history of the building. This is one of four short videos that were produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the building in 2013:
There are important lessons about architecture, and the built environment, has profound meaning-making functions.
A short documentary on the structural aspects of the building:
The background story to figuring out how to build it is fascinating, and important to understanding the breakdown in relations between the structural engineering firm, Ove Arup of London though founded by a fellow Dane, and Utzon. Ove Arup devoted huge resources to solving construction issues, although the key insight ultimately came from Utzon and his team himself. The manufacturing solution, and the complex calculations to realise it, was primarily the work of a brilliant French engineer, Joe Bertony, from Australian construction company Hornibrook. Joe Bertony was a spy for the French resistance during World War II, twice escaped Nazi concentration camps and was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Government for bravery.
Even today there remains intense controversy about whether Utzon had failed to produce needed plans to advance the project, as Ove Arup’s lead structural engineer on the project Sir Jack Zunz long asserted, but Ove Arup has had an incentive in maintaining that narrative as it continued on the project after Utzon resigned. Others have disputed that, most notably iconic Australia-based modernist architect Harry Seidler.
Kevin McLeod, presenter of the popular British architectural show Grand Designs, on renovations to the Sydney Opera House. The short doco is rather uncritical, making no mention of the intense conflicts about the internal form the building that arose with the resignation of Jorn Utzon and his replacement by local architect Peter Hall. Key factors in that were a political decision to reject Utzon’s design for the opera and concert halls, to make the latter the much larger space to accommodate the ABC Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s demand for a large home performing space. Many of the problems with the building resulted from that decision.
ZEMI * Christopher Pokarier 