Opera Starz Blog: 2013

The Sydney Opera House possesses just about the most complex design structures on the earth.
By Naomi Hall

It consists of (understand this) 1000 rooms (not 10 or 100, but 1000 rooms... mania), including five auditoriums, a reception hall, five rehearsal studios, four restaurants (awesome!), six theatre bars, an extensive foyer and lounge areas, sixty dressing rooms and suites, a library, an artists' lounge (more lounges) and also a canteen called the "Green Room" (we used to do Green Room within senior high school within the evening of a production), administrative offices and extensive plant and machinery areas. (All this equals 1000 rooms... again insanity). The property is built on the Sydney Harbour which is held by 580 concrete piers that are 82 feet below sea level (that is certainly soooo cool!). Within the Concert Hall, there exists (I believe) the greatest organ within the Universe. It has been designed and built by Ronald Sharp (who's Australian, naturally. 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 know what which means, but them some big numbers). Okay, now that we've broken the ice, let's check out the Sydney Opera House!

Many years ago down in a country far, a long way away... there was a harbor called the Sydney Harbor. And in this magical place would have been a fort, called the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot. And it wasn't until a person named Jorn Utzon (don't ask me best ways to pronounce this) won a tournament which the NSW (New South Wales) Government had made (it turned out some international design competition to generate a place with two performance halls) that the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot was demolished. The Depot was demolished in 1958. (We'll proceed to the Utzon fellow in a sec, for now, a few minutes of silence for the demolished Depot................. okay, I presume that's enough.)

Jorn Utzon is definitely the original designer on the Sydney Opera House. He won the competition in 1956 and also the NSW Government made him the sole architect to the house. Utzon was born on April 9, 1918 in Copenhagen (April babies are awesome. Yes, I am an April baby. Whoo!!). He received his Diploma in Architecture via the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1942 and had his personal 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 conflicts that Utzon as well as the NSW Government faced when they constructed the house. By January 23, 1961, construction was 42 weeks behind schedule (yikes!). There had been weather problems and design/construction problems. Utzon was designing the place because it had been built (by no means a positive thing) and because of this, the style brief kept changing. The podium columns were too weak and couldn't retain the intricate roof top, so those had to be rebuilt (which cost the builders too much effort). Sadly, Utzon resigned in 1966 as a consequence of cost overruns and the alternation in government. The brand new Robert Askin Government placed the construction of the house inside of the jurisdiction within the Secretary of state for Public Works. This caused lots of challenges and lead to street demonstrations (unhealthy). FYI: During the entire development on the Sydney Opera House, architects kept transforming. After Utzon's resignation, Peter Hall, Lionel Todd, David Littlemore, additionally, the new NSW Government Architect (I'm assuming that is prior to the government changed. I am not really sure) Ted Farmer took control of the building of the house. They completed the glass walls and three venues which were added since the NSW Government wanted a larger concert hall (it seems that concerts were more common 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, so we talked many of the architect dilemmas. Let's converse more about the setting up engineering.)

Starting from what I have investigated concerning the house, the most challenging piece was the rooftop structure using the shells. The shell structure took eight many years to develop (wow) as well as the ceramic tiles only took three years. The technicians for the house made a minimum of twelve iterations within the shells to obtain the most economically beneficial one. The style of the shells was so difficult which the engineers used laptop computer (when it was just coming out) to investigate the dwelling with the shells. Finally an answer was found. They came up with the shells from a sphere to make them much easier to handle. There have been controversies over who found the perfect solution is. For now, it is said that Utzon and his followers learned the remedy together. The Concert Hall uses white birch plywood (also included in pianos, In my opinion) about the upper walls and hard brown wood on the lower walls, stairs, boxes, and stage platform. Along with a degree of 880,000 cubic feet (WOWW) the Hall delivers rich, full, mellow tones during concerts. (That's exactly how you get astounding acoustics.)

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

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