What material would they use? Steel? Hughes demanded detailed drawings from the architect before he’d release any more funds for models; Utzon said he couldn’t produce anything meaningful without building them. Unbeknownst to the engineers, Utzon was designing a pattern of panels and mullions of stretched plywood “like a walnut inside its shell”. The new minister of public works, Davis Hughes, invited the engineers to second-guess him. By 1965 the podium and sails were in place and Utzon, working increasingly in isolation, was testing plans for the interiors. But costs were spiralling, and Cahill was ousted by a Liberal/Country coalition elected to the statehouse on a promise to shiver some timbers down at the waterfront.The end was not long in coming.
New South Wales’ Labor premier, JJ Cahill, embarked on that quintessentially modern project of forging a common culture by bringing the arts to the workers – literally so when Paul Robeson visited the building site in 1960 and stirred construction crews with a rendition of “Ol’ Man River”. Utzon’s architectural gleanings brought influences from the Mayans, the Middle East and the Ming dynasty to one of the century’s great immigrant cities, and, with them, the sense that here was an expression in modern materials of the multicultural society taking shape on its doorstep.It means that the Opera House became established largely without the nagging allegations of elitism familiar from discussions of opera in London. As Utzon, speaking to his first Australian interviewer in more than 30 years, recently put it: “The building represents the end of Australia as a colony and the beginning of a republic.”A referendum at the end of next year will prove whether Australians are ready for that commitment, but certainly the building work itself foundered on a collective failure of nerve. Utzon called it “a piece of poetry” but the construction relied on the most prosaic of industrial methods.
The great sails actually consist of prefabricated concrete chunks, beaded like necklaces on strings of high-tensile steel. The principles of what its creator called “additive architecture” originated not in some contemporary design school, but in Imperial China where scholars laid down the principles of arranging simple elements many times over into a complex whole, as long as 900 years ago.Fifties Australia was a time and place in which putdowns of the sort perfected by Mark Twain – “a continent peopled entirely by the lower orders” – had begun to sting. Though few of them realise it, three million visitors a year are gazing at parts of a perfect sphere.Why did Sir Norman Foster call the Opera House “the emblematic building of our century”? Paradoxes abound. For years, they defied engineers’ attempts to turn them into geometry – until Utzon himself showed them how the structure could attain three dimensions by the simple expedient of peeling an orange. The edifice at Bennelong Point, nestling beneath the protective arc of the Harbour Bridge, is itself now the subject of an opera. Called The Eighth Wonder, it unfolds another story, of tragedy and farce, inspiration and resentment, expansive vision and small-minded penny-pinching.
Now there are the first glimmerings of what could prove a happy ending to the saga of how Sydney got its Opera House while its Danish architect departed, a fallen hero.
Jorn Utzon produced his first freehand sketches as long ago as 1957. The first mother-of-pearl glimpses of those famous sails appear, and, within thirty seconds, the greatest manmade vista of our time has opened, like an oyster shell disclosing its treasure. For 20 minutes or so of the Manly Ferry’s stately progress into the Big End of Town, Sydney’s horizon could belong to any of the thrusting cities of South East Asia’s convoluted coastlines, walls of glass and concrete reaching for the sky. Then, a 100 metres or so off the starboard bow, the light refracted through the fringe of native eucalypti at Bradley’s Head seems to brighten.
They can be contacted on 0116-233 7007Call Waste Watch Wasteline: 0870 243 0136 and send an SAE for a free factsheet, “Recycling for Householders” to Europa House, 13-17 Ironmonger Row, London EC1V 3QN.Further informationThe Alternative Centre for Technology: 01654 702 400, has general information and an extensive booklist.Highly recommended: `The Green Guide’ series (six regional editions 1998/99, pounds 5); available from most major bookshops or call 0171-354 2709 to order direct.`Women Unlimited, The Directory for Life’ is published by Penguin at pounds 9.99.. Some shops also operate refill schemes.Avoid overpackaged products, or remove packaging and leave it with the shop.Contact your local authority to find out about recycling facilities; many supermarkets also have them.Compost organic waste to reduce your bin contents by up to 20 per cent.The Furniture Recycling Network collects and renovates domestic furniture for cheap resale. Clean drains with a handful of salt and boiling water.Call the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) for information on recycling and refilling: 0171-247 3327Buy locally produced food and use seasonal vegetables.The organic food market is worth pounds 260 million a year and is growing rapidly. The Soil Association publication Where to buy Organic food, pounds 5, can be ordered (credit card/Switch) on 0117-914 2446Reduce, reuse and recycleReducing waste is more efficient than recycling.Look for reusable and durable alternatives. These products clean just as effectively but they use vegetable-based, biodegradable ingredients which break the detergent down naturally.Natural alternatives for cleaning: Use bicarbonate of soda as a scouring powder on sinks and bathrooms and as a polish for chrome; use vinegar for cleaning bathroom tiles and shower doors (wipe it on, leave a few minutes and rinse.) Vinegar can also be used to descale kettles or remove stains from teapots.
