Sydney Opera House (Australia)

The Sydney Opera House is a monumental urban sculpture located at Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour. Sydney Opera House is one of the busiest performing arts centres in the world, each year staging up to 2500 performances and events, drawing around 1.5 million patrons, and attracting an estimated 4 million visitors. The Sydney Opera House was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2007. The Sydney Opera House is a masterpiece of human creative genius and a daring and visionary experiment that has had an enduring influence on the emergent architecture of the late 20th century. Jørn Utzon's original design is a great artistic monument and an exceptional building composition responding to the Sydney Harbour setting. It comprises three groups of interlocking vaulted 'shells' set upon a vast terraced platform and surrounded by terrace areas that function as pedestrian concourses. The two main halls are arranged side by side, with their long axes, slightly inclined from each other, generally running north-south. The auditoria face south, away from the harbour with the stages located between the audience and the city. The Forecourt is a vast open space from which people ascend the stairs to the podium. The Monumental Steps, which lead up from the Forecourt to the two main performance venues, are a great ceremonial stairway nearly 100 metres wide. The vaulted roof shells were designed by Utzon in collaboration with internationally renowned engineers Ove Arup & Partners with the final shape of the shells derived from the surface of a single imagined sphere. Each shell is composed of pre-cast rib segments radiating from a concrete pedestal and rising to a ridge beam. The shells are faced in glazed off-white tiles while the podium is clad in earth-toned, reconstituted granite panels. The glass walls are a special feature of the building, constructed according to the modified design by Utzon's successor architect, Peter Hall.