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He wasn’t even present at the inauguration ceremony in 1973. When Utzon was ceased payment and was forced to retire as chief architect he left Australia and never came back until 1999 when he saw the finished building for the first time. Utzon was then replaced by a group of architects selected by the minister of Public Works of New South Wales, including Ted Farmer, who was in charge of completing the glass walls and interiors. By mid-1965 a new government took over and started questioning Utzon’s design which was already delayed and way over its initial 3 million (Australian dollars) budget. Despite the project being well advanced Utzon had not yet finalized the interior designs at that point.

The prefabricated ribbed vaults started taking shape and the podium was finally completed in 1964.

Even though his presentation was lacking in many areas and was little more than a few sketched it catch the eye of who was considered to be a very prominent judge, Eero Saarinen, so the project went through despite its lack of information and Joseph Cahill, prime minister at that time, quickly announced that the works would start in just two years.Īfter numerous tests, Utzon, together with the engineering firm Ove Arup, developed a full design based on the complex sections from a sphere. When Utzon presented his idea to the competition in 1957 he barely showed a few schematics explaining the concept behind his project. Overall there are more than 1000 rooms, most of them dedicated to music studios, with a capacity to host over 5000 people comfortably seated.

The building is structured under a series of “shells” which give cover to several theater complexes organized on two main axis. By that time Utzon had been forced to abandon the project by a new government However the complexity of the engineering of the building delayed the works over and over until the project was finally completed 14 years later with a total cost of 102 million Australian dollars. The project was supposed to be completed in three years at a cost of 3 million Australian dollars. Utzon himself defined the building’s concept as a combination of “slices of oranges”. After winning the international competition to build the Sydney Opera House Jørn Utzon’s controversial project broke ground in 1959 at Bennelong Point.