The Sydney opera house stands out at the Sydney harbour as the jewel of Australia. It bears with it marks of a monument and is in itself a masterpiece. It has to this day become a symbol of what is fine in architecture and a very representative of what is great in Sydney Australia beside the Harbour bridge.

The building which is no just building stands of the coast like something out of another era. The inspiration for the design is sails as conceived by the man, architect Jorn Utzon who had spent most of his early childhood with his father who served as a maritime engineer.

Entries for the project competition were made in 1957 when Jorn Utzon was about 38 years old. He had studied a diploma in architecture and worked with a number of other architects including Alvar Aalto before he established his own practice. `Story goes that during the judging of the competition one of the judges, renowned American architect, Eero Saarinen, arrived in Sydney after the other three judges had started assessing the entries. He looked through their rejected entries and stopped at the Utzon design declaring it to be outstanding.`(sydneyoperahouse.com)

"It stands by itself as one of the indisputable masterpieces of human creativity, not only in the 20th century but in the history of humankind." Expert evaluation report to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, 2007

With an original estimate of 7 million dollars the budget was vastly exceeded with a final cost of 102 million dollars. From <http://www.archdaily.com/65218/ad-classics-sydney-opera-house-j%25c3%25b8rn-utzon> The architect`s vision saw what was at face value seen as impossible to execute done along with several changes and his engineer Ove Arup who developed designs based on a sphere.

The project underwent several changes but the architect later had to resign from the project due to various reasons in 1966.the building was later opened in 1963 by Queen Elizabeth II It is in fact said by some sources that Jorn Utzon never returned to see or behold his work after he left Australia. however, this sparked off demonstrations in the city of Sydney.  He was later reinstated as the architect for the project in 1999. the building won him several awards such as the golden award of the royal institute of architects Australia, Pritzker prize which is the highest prize in architecture among others.

Utzon said of the Design Principles, published in 2002, "My job is to articulate the overall vision and detailed design principles for the site, and for the form of the building and its interior". “I like to think the Sydney Opera House is like a musical instrument, and like any fine instrument, it needs a little maintenance and fine tuning, from time to time, if it is to keep on performing at the highest level."

The architect died at the age of 90 in November 2008 having had one of the halls in the opera house named after him. He completed several other projects which included the Colonade, Bagsværd Church (1976, parliament building in Kuwait (1983) among others.

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