The Sydney Opera House – an iconic landmark.
- The Sydney Opera House is an iconic building that is mainly dedicated to the performing arts.
- The Sydney Opera House is located in one of Australia’s state capitals, Sydney, in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales.
- The Sydney Opera House was designed by Jørn Utzon, an architect from Denmark, that was the winning design decided upon in an international design competition in 1957.
- Every year, the Sydney Opera House holds approximately 1500 performances and sees 8.2 million visitors.
- On 28 June, 2007, the Sydney Opera House was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and at the time, was the youngest building to be added to the list.
Sydney Opera House
Image courtesy of Australia Photos (Flickr)
- The Sydney Opera House has a design type of modern expressionist, with the notable feature of over a million individual white to cream ceramic tiles across the ten ‘shells’ or ‘sails’.
- The Sydney Opera House is 65 metres (213 feet) in height and 4.4 acres (1.8 hectares) in area, and is located on land that was previously used as a tram depot and even earlier, as Fort Macquarie.
- Construction on the Sydney Opera House began in 1959 and cost $102 million to build, which was over 14 times the proposed budget.
- The idea of having a ‘Sydney Opera House’ was proposed by Eugene Goossens in the 1940s, who was a composer and conductor, and at the time, the director of NSW State Conservatorium of Music.
- The Sydney Opera House was officially opened on the 20 October, 1973, by Queen Elizabeth II, but the designer, Utzon, was not credited.
Bibliography:
A Danish architect, an Australian icon: the history of the Sydney Opera House, 2013, ABC News, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-21/anthony-burke-on-sydney-opera-house-history/5034028
Sydney Opera House, History and Heritage, 2014, Sydney Opera House, http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/the_building_history_heritage.aspx
Sydney Opera House, 2014, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Opera_House
