One of the most popular landmarks that is located in Sydney in Australia is the Sydney Opera House.
Let’s find out about Sydney Opera House!
- The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre.
- It is located at Sydney Harbour located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
- It is one of the 20th century’s most famous and distinctive buildings.
- It is designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon.
- Despite that it was completed by an Australian architectural team headed up by Peter Hall.
- The building was formally opened on 20 October 1973 after a gestation beginning with Utzon’s 1957 selection as winner of an international design competition.
- The Government of New South Wales, led by the premier, Joseph Cahill, authorised work to begin in 1958 with Utzon directing construction.
- The government’s decision to build Utzon’s design is often overshadowed by circumstances that followed, including cost and scheduling overruns as well as the architect’s ultimate resignation.
- The building and its surrounds occupy the whole of Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove, adjacent to the Sydney central business district and the Royal Botanic Gardens, and close by the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
- The building comprises multiple performance venues, which together host well over 1,500 performances annually, attended by more than 1.2 million people.
- Performances are presented by numerous performing artists, including three resident companies: Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
- It is considered as one of the most popular visitor attractions in Australia.
- The site is visited by more than eight million people annually.
- Approximately 350,000 visitors take a guided tour of the building each year.
- The building is managed by the Sydney Opera House Trust, an agency of the New South Wales State Government.The Sydney Opera House during sunrise
- On 28 June 2007, the Sydney Opera House became a UNESCO World Heritage Site, having been listed on the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate since 1980, the National Trust of Australia register since 1983, the City of Sydney Heritage Inventory since 2000, the New South Wales State Heritage Register since 2003, and the Australian National Heritage List since 2005.
- Furthermore, the Opera House was a finalist in the New7Wonders of the World campaign.
- The facility features a modern expressionist design, with a series of large precast concrete “shells”.
- Each composed of sections of a sphere of 75.2 metres (246 ft 8.6 in) radius, forming the roofs of the structure, set on a monumental podium.
- The building covers 1.8 hectares (4.4 acres) of land and is 183 m (600 ft) long and 120 m (394 ft) wide at its widest point.
- It is supported on 588 concrete piers sunk as much as 25 m (82 ft) below sea level.
- The highest roof point is 67 metres above sea-level which is the same height as that of a 22-storey building.
- The roof is made of 2,194 pre-cast concrete sections, which weigh up to 15 tonnes each.
- Although the roof structures are commonly referred to as “shells” (as in this article), they are precast concrete panels supported by precast concrete ribs, not shells in a strictly structural sense.
- Though the shells appear uniformly white from a distance, they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern composed of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours: glossy white and matte cream.
- The tiles were manufactured by the Swedish company Höganäs AB which generally produced stoneware tiles for the paper-mill industry.
- Apart from the tile of the shells and the glass curtain walls of the foyer spaces, the building’s exterior is largely clad with aggregate panels composed of pink granite quarried at Tarana.
- Significant interior surface treatments also include off-form concrete, Australian white birch plywood supplied from Wauchope in northern New South Wales, and brush box glulam.
- Of the two larger spaces, the Concert Hall is in the western group of shells, the Joan Sutherland Theatre in the eastern group.
- The scale of the shells was chosen to reflect the internal height requirements, with low entrance spaces, rising over the seating areas up to the high stage towers.
- The smaller venues (the Drama Theatre, the Playhouse and the Studio) are within the podium, beneath the Concert Hall.
- A smaller group of shells set to the western side of the Monumental Steps houses the Bennelong Restaurant.
- The podium is surrounded by substantial open public spaces, and the large stone-paved forecourt area with the adjacent monumental steps is regularly used as a performance space.
- The building also houses a recording studio, cafes, restaurants, bars and retail outlets. Guided tours are available, including a frequent tour of the front-of-house spaces, and a daily backstage tour that takes visitors backstage to see areas normally reserved for performers and crew members.
- Sydney Opera House sits on Bennelong Point. Bennelong Point was named after Woollarawarre Bennelong, a senior Eora man at the time of the arrival of British colonisers in Australia in 1788.
- The original cost estimate to build Sydney Opera House was $7 million. The final cost was $102 million and it was largely paid for by a State Lottery.
- 233 designs were submitted for the Opera House international design competition held in 1956. Jørn Utzon from Denmark was announced the winner, receiving ₤5000 for his design.
- Construction was expected to take four years. It took 14 years. Work commenced in 1959 and involved 10,000 construction workers.
- Paul Robeson was the first person to perform at Sydney Opera House. In 1960, he climbed the scaffolding and sang Ol’ Man River to the construction workers as they ate lunch.
- There are more than 1 million roof tiles covering approximately 1.62 hectares sitting over the structure. They were made in Sweden.
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