Leon van Schaik has recently argued in his
book Design City Melbourne that, for all its
great qualities, Jørn Utzon’s Opera House
has made little impact on the architectural
culture of Sydney. In fact, he writes
provocatively, it has had “as much
consequence for the local design culture as
if it were from Mars”. There is, however, a
definable streak in Sydney architecture that
suggests otherwise, as was very evident in a
recent series of talks. Convened by Eoghan
Lewis, each of the four talks was presented
by different speakers around the theme of
“celebrating the work and influence of Jørn
Utzon”. The talks coincided with Utzon’s
birthday and the ongoing work at the Opera
House, including the opening of the new
western loggia. The events are part of the
long-running “Slide Night” series, organized
by Lewis and Simeon King, but this focused
series on Utzon was a new initiative which,
in collaboration with the Historic Houses
Trust, formalized the discussion in the more
plush institutional venues of the Museum of
Sydney and The Mint.
Lewis is a prominent figure in local
discourse and education and is well known
in Sydney as the convenor of the Sydney
Architecture Walks. If the intention there is
to understand architecture and the city by
walking around them, there is a neat analogy
with his intention in these Utzon events –
to “talk about the object by talking around
it”, to approach Utzon’s major work
circuitously. Accordingly, the four talks
were framed as a kind of loose before-andafter,
beginning with “The Bayview
Houses”, followed by “Utzon vs. the Liberal
Government”, then “After Sydney:
Denmark, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and
Majorca” and finally “The Legacy”. The aim
was to generate a “pointy” local debate
about this seminal building, a discussion
both topical and critical, and thus to
examine Utzon’s significance for this city
and for twentieth-century architecture.
The series opened, appropriately enough,
with Richard Leplastrier, who worked for
Utzon from 1964 to 1966, and who was
deeply influenced by that period. While the
talk was ostensibly about the unrealized
Bayview houses that Utzon designed for his
family, and James Weirick discussed these
in a lengthy introduction, it seemed more
an occasion for storytelling about Utzon’s
life and work in Sydney. This first event was
sold out, and the audience sat riveted,
giving occasional little hums of empathetic
agreement or clicking tongues in surprise;
this was not your usual architectural
audience. They liked what they got,
however, as Leplastrier recounted Utzon’s
lessons – what it was to be in “a group of
young people working for this amazing
man”. There was a palpable nostalgia in
Leplastrier’s account of those idyllic days,
forty years ago, when he and Utzon would
go sailing, and a poignancy in his wistful
comment that “it was just so nice …”.
The second talk, by the venerable triad
Elias Duek Cohen, Bill Wheatland and
Sylvia Lawson, detailed the minutiae of the
political and legal processes that preceded
and followed Utzon’s departure from the
Opera House project. Bill Wheatland in
particular, as the architect left to “clean up” Utzon’s affairs and to pursue his court case
for unpaid fees, was in a unique position to
observe the architectural and ideological
machinations. This talk gave a sense that
oral history was being performed before our
eyes. It is commendable that the Historic
Houses Trust has recorded these
discussions and will archive them online.
The third talk was given by Alex Popov,
who worked for Utzon for ten years and was
probably the closest to him of all the
speakers, in both personal and professional
terms. Perhaps because of this familiarity,
his was a refreshingly matter-of-fact
presentation, which retained a critical
acuity sometimes lacking in the others. His
presentation of the work “after Sydney” was
illuminating – it sometimes seemed that
Utzon was cursed, with almost every major
project in the years following his leaving
Sydney being stymied in one way or
another. The Zurich Schauspielhaus, for
instance, which Utzon won in an
international competition, was abandoned
overnight after seven years of
documentation.
The fourth and final talk was the most
indicative of the impact Utzon has had on
the local scene, as it largely focused on the
concept of influence and, by extension, on
genealogy. Chris Bosse of PTW, Peter Poulet
and Peter Stutchbury each addressed the
theme of nature and its role as an
inspiration and source for architecture. For
me the most revealing moment of the whole
series came in Stutchbury’s presentation,
when he recounted an anecdote that
Leplastrier had already told three weeks
earlier. The story was about sailing on
Pittwater and Utzon pointing out a
particular cloud formation rising up and
over a headland. While this moment had
clearly been something of an epiphany for
Leplastrier, what is really interesting is
how the very same story was retold by
Stutchbury, one of Leplastrier’s own
students. This telling and retelling of stories
passed down from generation to generation
is precisely what writes history into myth.
Perhaps it is now impossible for a public
audience to talk about the “Great Dane” without a strange intellectual rowdiness
emerging – an anxious desire to loudly
cheer the hero and throw tomatoes at the
villains. At one point, James Weirick referred
to “the Opera House tragedy”, and there is
indeed something of the theatrical epic here,
complete with Greek chorus and wailing.
Hushed reverence is mixed with a
surprisingly vehement – albeit to me rather
misguided – vilification of Hall, Todd and
Littlemore, who took over the project after
Utzon’s departure. There is an almost
palpable sense of communal guilt, apology
and a fierce wish for redemption. In Sydney
today, it is perhaps not possible to be
clear-eyed and critical about Utzon and his
legacy. The subject is so overdetermined
and overwrought, both the quasi-religious
hagiography and the cynicism are so thick –
the trees press so close it may be impossible
to see the forest.
In this context, Lewis’s decision to circle
the Opera House without directly addressing
it seems very wise. But van Schaik’s
question of the building’s consequence for
Sydney architecture remains. It seems to me
that this impact is quite distinct, but that it
is less a formal influence and more one of
architectural attitude, design process and
personal connection. Genealogy maintains
a very firm grip in Sydney architecture, and
there is a privileged lineage which springs
from a handful of “masters”, including
Utzon, and leads down through several
generations of disciples. The fact that many
of these figures have held influential
teaching positions, and indeed have been
great teachers, has perpetuated this
reverential emulation, continuously passing
it down. It has fundamentally inflected what
we know as Sydney architecture today.
NAOMI STEAD IS A SENIOR LECTURER IN
ARCHITECTURE AT UTS.
THE RECORDINGS OF THE UTZON TALKS ARE
ONLINE AT WWW.HHT.NET.AU/ONLINE_FEATURES/AUDIO. SYDNEY ARCHITECTURE WALKS CAN BE
FOUND AT WWW.SYDNEYARCHITECTURE.ORG
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