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Sphere of influence
By Patrick Whiteley (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-22 08:57
 Utzon became so hooked on the manual, he returned to China to buy his own copy to take with him to Sydney during the Opera House's construction. Under the set-piece design principles in the manual, all of the Opera House's roof shells come from a single sphere. One of his assistants revealed how Utzon explained this idea by cutting all the shell-shaped pieces from the skin of a single orange. Forbidden City architecture used a floating-cloud effect that also influenced Utzon's final design of the famous white shell exterior. Carter says Utzon's side-by-side sketches of the Opera House and the Forbidden City reveal how the 500-year-old Chinese imperial palace inspired him. "I recently bought a text book used by architecture students and on the cover there is a picture of the Imperial Palace and also the Opera House, reflecting the old and the new," he says. "But I don't think the students realize the close relationship between the two buildings."
Utzon took ideas from all over the world and was strongly influenced by Mexico's platform temples used by the Yucatn, which featured huge, stepped approaches. The Sydney Opera House has a massive podium that forms the base. Other influences include the dome of Isfahan's Great Mosque, the fortified villages of Morocco and natural surroundings found in Japanese houses. Carter says Utzon used nature as a teacher and believed buildings should be organic and harmonize with their natural surroundings. One of the most powerful visual features of the Opera House is the glittering effect created by special tiles, which look like a fresh layer of snow with ice crystals shining on it. Utzon once again traveled to China and Japan, looking at samples of ancient roof tiles and half-glazed ware because he believed the materials needed to come from the ancient building world, which had stood up to many years' use without deterioration. |
