The Sydney Opera House Boasts By Far The Most Complex Design Structures On The Globe.

By Naomi Hall


It has (fully grasp this) 1000 rooms (not 10 or 100, but 1000 rooms... mania), including five auditoriums, a reception hall, five rehearsal studios, four restaurants (nice!), six theatre bars, an extensive foyer and lounge areas, sixty dressing rooms and suites, a library, an artists' lounge (more lounges) plus a canteen referred to as the "Green Room" (we used to do Green Room within school within the evening of a production), administrative offices and extensive plant and machinery areas. (More or less everything equals 1000 rooms... again insanity). The property is built at the Sydney Harbour and it is sustained by 580 concrete piers which are 82 feet below sea level (that is definitely soooo cool!). In the Concert Hall, there may be (I'm sure) the biggest organ inside Universe. It had been designed and built by Ronald Sharp (who's Australian, certainly. Sydney is in Australia) between 1969 and 1979. This musical beast has 10,500 pipes (holy cowwww!!!), five manual keyboards, one pedal keyboard, and 127 stops arranged in 205 ranks (don't really know what which means, but them some big numbers). Okay, given that we've broken the ice, let's examine the Sydney Opera House!

Years ago deep in a country far, a long way away... there is a harbor referred to as Sydney Harbor. As well as in this magical place would be a fort, called the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot. Also it wasn't until an individual named Jorn Utzon (don't ask me the right way to pronounce this) won a competition that the NSW (New South Wales) Government had made (it was some international design competition to generate a dwelling with two performance halls) which the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot was demolished. The Depot was demolished in 1958. (We'll move on to the Utzon fellow in a sec, but for now, a moment of silence for the demolished Depot................. okay, I feel that's enough.)

Jorn Utzon is definitely the original designer of the Sydney Opera House. He won the competition in 1956 along with the NSW Government made him the sole architect to the house. Utzon was given birth on April 9, 1918 in Copenhagen (April babies are awesome. Yes, I'm certainly an April baby. Whoo!!). He received his Diploma in Architecture from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1942 coupled with his own office (of architecture awesomeness) in 1946. (Okay, let's go back Sydney.)

The Sydney Opera House's building didn't start until March 1959. There have been many issues that Utzon and the NSW Government faced as they created the residence. By January 23, 1961, construction was 42 weeks behind schedule (yikes!). There were weather difficulties and design/construction problems. Utzon was designing the place since it had been built (under no circumstances a positive thing) and because of this, the design brief kept changing. The podium columns were too weak and couldn't include the elaborate roof structure, so those would have to be rebuilt (which cost the builders a lot of time). Sadly, Utzon resigned in 1966 because of cost overruns and also the change in government. The new Robert Askin Government placed the building of the place below the jurisdiction belonging to the Ministry of Public Works. This caused several troubles and bring about street demonstrations (unhealthy). FYI: Through the entire assembly on the Sydney Opera House, architects kept adjusting. After Utzon's resignation, Peter Hall, Lionel Todd, David Littlemore, plus the new NSW Government Architect (I'm assuming this is in front of the government changed. I'm not really, really sure) Ted Farmer took command over the making of the house. They performed the glass walls and three venues that were added since the NSW Government wanted a better concert hall (it seems that concerts were more popular than opera... not cool). Between 1986 and 1988, Peter Hall and the new (newer) NSW Government Architect, Andrew Anderson (catchy name), worked on the land approach and the Forecourt of the property. (Okay, therefore we talked a lot of the architect dilemma. Let's discuss even more regarding the setting up construction.)

Because of a few things I have searched with regard to the house, probably the most demanding piece was the roofing structure considering the shells. The shell structure took eight several years to construct (wow) as well as the ceramic tiles only took three years. The technicians for the house made at least twelve iterations of the shells to discover the most economically valuable one. The design of the shells was so complex which the engineers used laptop computer (when it was just being released) to research the dwelling with the shells. Finally an answer was discovered. They came up with the shells out of a sphere to ensure they are preferable to handle. We have witnessed controversy over who uncovered the perfect solution is. Right now, it is known that Utzon and his awesome followers uncovered the most effective together. The Concert Hall uses white birch plywood (also used in pianos, I really believe) over the upper walls and hard brown wood on the lower walls, stairs, boxes, and stage platform. With a quantity of 880,000 cubic feet (WOWW) the Hall yields rich, full, mellow tones during concerts. (That's how you get spectacular acoustics.)

Subsequently, the Sydney Opera House was finally finished in 1973 and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on October 20 of the exact same year. It took roughly 14 years for that house to be built.




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