Opera Theatre Mono - a photo on Flickriver

Opera Theatre Mono

            The Sydney Opera House took 16 years to build. Constructed between 1957 and 1973, it is a masterpiece of modern architectural design, engineering and construction technology in Australia. It exhibits the creative genius of its designer, the Pritzker Prize winner Danish architect Jørn Utzon, the successful engineering by the Danish firm Ove Arup and Partners, and the Australian building contractors M R Hornibrook. The completion of the project was overseen by the architects Hall, Todd and Littlemore, and the story of its construction was one of great controversy.

Complex engineering problems and escalating costs made it a source of great public debate that only subsided when the beauty and achievement of the completed building placed it on the world stage.

The technical challenge of how to construct the roof took four years to solve. It was based on the geometry of the sphere and Utzon used this to demonstrate the creative potential and the assembly of prefabricated, repeated components. It was seen as a structure at the leading edge of endeavour.

The Opera House is located on Bennelong Point, with a superb harbour setting. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007. It is the most recently constructed World Heritage Site to be designated as such, sharing this distinction with slightly older landmarks like Stonehenge and the Giza Necropolis. The building houses two main venues, the Opera Theatre (seen above) and the Concert Hall, which is off-shot to the left.

The roofs are covered in a subtle chevron pattern with 1,056,006 glossy white- and matte-cream-coloured Swedish-made tiles from Höganäs AB, though, from a distance, the shells appear a uniform white. 

Although the roof structures of the Sydney Opera House are commonly referred to as sails or shells, they are in fact neither in a strictly structural sense, but are instead pre-cast concrete panels supported by pre-cast concrete ribs.

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 in Tarana.

A black and white rework of an earlier image in this stream.

Taken in: Australia / New South Wales / Sydney / Sydney Central (show map)

Taken on: December 7, 2009

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Camera: Canon EOS 450D, f/7.1, 1/100 sec, 17mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 450D
Lens:	EF-S17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM
Aperture:	f/7.1
Exposure Time:	0.01 sec (1/100)
Focal Length:	17mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Spot
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.6.1 (Macintosh)
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