Opera House required two halls, one seating 3,500 and the other 1,200. He showed an image of the Royal Festival Hall and then, presto, he was a magician. He doubled the image, so there were two identical halls side by side, and what did you have?
The Sydney Opera House on the River Thames? Not quite, but imagine a man of genius beginning this way, just as Picasso might take Veliizquez perhaps, and by a series of daring steps arrive at something new. The double image of the festival hall looked like two captives, blocks of stone from which the masterwork would soon be carved.
This is how culture works, asserted Myers. The Sydney Opera House is Joern Utzon recasting the Royal Festival Hall in such a way that Martin will understand. So the opera house is an esoteric letter from the architect to the most powerful member of the jury.
There is not the slightest doubt, said Peter Myers, that Martin would immediately decode this compliment, this fabulously sophisticated, dazzlingly successful attempt to take his own work and turn it into something even more wonderful. Amongst the proofs that he continued to pull out of his sleeve was Utzon's perspective drawing of the opera house.
The Conditions of Competition (item no. 7) required perspective drawing of such elevation as the competitor may select as his main elevation and/or approach to the building. Utzon chose, instead, to insist on what he had done, to emphasise the doubling, and he audaciously rendered, not the two halls in perspective, but the space between them.
He heightened the drawing with gold leaf, said Peter Myers, which is perhaps one reason none of the drawings were shown to the public. This one with the gold leaf might be deemed to have broken the rules of the competition.
Finally it was Saarinen who rendered the required perspective drawing of Utzon's opera house, and to that extent he was the hero for without this drawing the design could not have won.
Well he had convinced me, but Peter Myers would not leave well enough alone, and now he was driven to prove that both Utzon's and Martin's designs related to a famous building in Copenhagen and that each of their designs were, in a sense, a conversation, a love letter written to another building, invisible to all but them.
Enough.
At past seven, just as he produced issue number two of the Architects' Yearbook (of which Leslie Martin was the editor), I had to stand, not just because I was out of my depth, but because I was late for David Williamson's play The Great Man which had recently begun its Sydney season in the Drama Theatre of the opera house, a space which was not even indicated in the original brief and which was one of those indications that Utzon would inherit a client who not only gives bad information about the nature of the site but also changes his mind continually.
I slink out of the lecture theatre, out into the dark rainy streets of City Road where - another miracle - I find a taxi.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I WAS MUCH SURPRISED at the fortifications of Sydney Harbour, wrote Anthony Trollope. Fortifications, unless specially inspected, escape even a vigilant seer of sights, but I, luckily for myself, was enabled specially to inspect them. I had previously no idea that the people of New South Wales were either so suspicious of enemies, or so pugnacious in their nature. I found five separate fortresses, armed, or to be armed, to the teeth with numerous guns, - four, five, six at each point; - Armstrong guns, rifled guns, guns of eighteen tons of weight, with loopholed walls, and pits for riflemen as though Sydney were to become another Sebastopol. I was shown how the whole harbour and city were commanded by these guns. There were open batteries and casemented batteries, shell rooms and powder magazines, barracks rising here and trenches dug there. There was a boom to be placed across the harbour and a whole world of torpedoes ready to be sunk beneath the water, all of which were prepared and ready to
The Sydney Opera House on the River Thames? Not quite, but imagine a man of genius beginning this way, just as Picasso might take Veliizquez perhaps, and by a series of daring steps arrive at something new. The double image of the festival hall looked like two captives, blocks of stone from which the masterwork would soon be carved.
This is how culture works, asserted Myers. The Sydney Opera House is Joern Utzon recasting the Royal Festival Hall in such a way that Martin will understand. So the opera house is an esoteric letter from the architect to the most powerful member of the jury.
There is not the slightest doubt, said Peter Myers, that Martin would immediately decode this compliment, this fabulously sophisticated, dazzlingly successful attempt to take his own work and turn it into something even more wonderful. Amongst the proofs that he continued to pull out of his sleeve was Utzon's perspective drawing of the opera house.
The Conditions of Competition (item no. 7) required perspective drawing of such elevation as the competitor may select as his main elevation and/or approach to the building. Utzon chose, instead, to insist on what he had done, to emphasise the doubling, and he audaciously rendered, not the two halls in perspective, but the space between them.
He heightened the drawing with gold leaf, said Peter Myers, which is perhaps one reason none of the drawings were shown to the public. This one with the gold leaf might be deemed to have broken the rules of the competition.
Finally it was Saarinen who rendered the required perspective drawing of Utzon's opera house, and to that extent he was the hero for without this drawing the design could not have won.
Well he had convinced me, but Peter Myers would not leave well enough alone, and now he was driven to prove that both Utzon's and Martin's designs related to a famous building in Copenhagen and that each of their designs were, in a sense, a conversation, a love letter written to another building, invisible to all but them.
Enough.
At past seven, just as he produced issue number two of the Architects' Yearbook (of which Leslie Martin was the editor), I had to stand, not just because I was out of my depth, but because I was late for David Williamson's play The Great Man which had recently begun its Sydney season in the Drama Theatre of the opera house, a space which was not even indicated in the original brief and which was one of those indications that Utzon would inherit a client who not only gives bad information about the nature of the site but also changes his mind continually.
I slink out of the lecture theatre, out into the dark rainy streets of City Road where - another miracle - I find a taxi.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I WAS MUCH SURPRISED at the fortifications of Sydney Harbour, wrote Anthony Trollope. Fortifications, unless specially inspected, escape even a vigilant seer of sights, but I, luckily for myself, was enabled specially to inspect them. I had previously no idea that the people of New South Wales were either so suspicious of enemies, or so pugnacious in their nature. I found five separate fortresses, armed, or to be armed, to the teeth with numerous guns, - four, five, six at each point; - Armstrong guns, rifled guns, guns of eighteen tons of weight, with loopholed walls, and pits for riflemen as though Sydney were to become another Sebastopol. I was shown how the whole harbour and city were commanded by these guns. There were open batteries and casemented batteries, shell rooms and powder magazines, barracks rising here and trenches dug there. There was a boom to be placed across the harbour and a whole world of torpedoes ready to be sunk beneath the water, all of which were prepared and ready to
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