JOERN UTZONSaarinen was responsible for selecting the Dan-
ish architect Joern Utzon(b. 1918) to build the Sydney Opera House
(FIG. 36-59) in Australia. Utzon’s design is a bold composition of or-
ganic forms on a colossal scale. Utzon worked briefly with Frank Lloyd
Wright at Taliesin (Wright’s Wisconsin residence), and the style of the
Sydney Opera House resonates distantly with the graceful curvature of
Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. Two clusters of immense concrete
shells—the largest is 200 feet tall—rise from massive platforms and
soar to delicate peaks. Recalling at first the ogival shapes of Gothic
vaults, the shells also suggest both the buoyancy of seabird wings and
the billowing sails of the tall ships that brought European settlers to
Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries. These architectural meta-
phors are appropriate to the harbor surrounding Bennelong Point,
whose bedrock foundations support the building. Utzon’s matching of
the structure with its site and atmosphere adds to the organic nature
of the design.
Begun in 1959, completion of the opera house had to wait until
1972, primarily because Utzon’s daring design required construc-
tion technology that had not yet been developed. Today the opera
house is Sydney’s defining symbol, a monument of civic pride that
functions as the city’s cultural center. In addition to the opera audi-
torium, the complex houses auxiliary halls and rooms for concerts,
the performing arts, motion pictures, lectures, art exhibitions, and
conventions.MIES VAN DER ROHE Sculpturesque building design was
not the only manifestation of postwar modernist architecture. From
the mid-1950s through the 1970s, other architects created massive,
sleek, and geometrically rigid buildings. They designed most of
these structures following Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe’s
contention that “less is more.” Many of these more “Minimalist” de-
signs are powerful, heroic presences in the urban landscape that ef-
fectively symbolize the giant corporations that often inhabit them.
The “purest” example of these corporate skyscrapers is the mid-
1950s rectilinear glass-and-bronze Seagram Building (FIG. 36-60) in
Manhattan, designed by Mies van der Rohe and American architect36-58Eero Saarinen,Trans World
Airlines terminal (terminal 5), John F.
Kennedy International Airport, New York,
1956–1962.
Saarinen based the design for this airline
terminal on the theme of motion. The
concrete-and-glass building’s dramatic,
sweeping, curvilinear rooflines appro-
priately suggest expansive wings and
flight.36-59Joern Utzon,
Sydney Opera House, Sydney,
Australia, 1959–1972.
The two soaring clusters of
concrete shells of Utzon’s
opera house on an immense
platform in Sydney’s harbor
suggest both the buoyancy
of seabird wings and the
billowing sails of tall ships.Architecture and Site-Specific Art 1005