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1955
A competition drew 233 entries from 32 countries
Premier Joseph Cahill launched an international design competition on 13 September 1955. It received 233 entries from architects in 32 countries. The winner, announced in Sydney on 29 January 1957, was the Danish architect Jørn Utzon, whose design was inspired by natural shapes such as bird wings, clouds, shells, walnuts, rivers and palm leaves.
233entries from architects in 32 countries
The shells
The white roof is made of more than a million tiles
The roof is made of 2,194 precast concrete sections, set on 588 concrete piers sunk as much as 25 metres below sea level. From a distance the shells look uniformly white, but they carry a subtle chevron pattern of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours, glossy white and matte cream. The tiles were made by the Swedish company Höganäs.
1966
The architect resigned in 1966, and never saw it finished
Work began in 1958 with Utzon directing it. The project ran over its costs and its schedule, and the Ministry criticized it, and thought his designs impractical. This led to his resignation in 1966. The government minutes record that he told the minister, Davis Hughes, "If you don't do it, I resign," and Hughes replied, "I accept your resignation."
1973
Queen Elizabeth II opened it on 20 October 1973, 16 years after the win
The building was completed by an Australian architectural team headed by Peter Hall. It was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 October 1973, 16 years after Utzon won the competition. Utzon received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2003, and the building became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007.
“There is no doubt that the Sydney Opera House is his masterpiece.”
The Pritzker Prize citation for Jørn Utzon, 2003
The halls
It holds the largest mechanical organ in the world
The Concert Hall has 2,679 seats and the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ, the largest mechanical tracker action organ in the world, with over 10,000 pipes. The Joan Sutherland Theatre has 1,507 seats and is the Sydney home of Opera Australia. The venues together host over 1,800 performances a year, attended by more than 1.4 million people.
Day 1, morning
Next is Royal Botanic Garden Sydney.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Sydney Opera House, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.