Visionary Danish architect Jørn Utzon was just thirty-eight years old when in 1957 he was named the surprise winner of an international competition to design the Sydney Opera House in Australia. His bold design consisting of five performance halls topped by billowing concrete shells clad in ceramic tile is universally recognized as a masterpiece of twentieth-century architecture. While this early triumph brought Utzon worldwide fame, it overshadowed a larger body of work of great importance for modern architecture. Utzon's highly diverse projects around the globe, from the National Assembly in Kuwait and Melli Bank in Tehran, Iran, to the Bagsværd Church and numerous houses in Denmark, are testaments to his belief that modernism need not sacrifice local character to be forward thinking. Organized into six thematic chapters—place, working method, building culture, construction, materiality, and living—Jørn Utzon presents all of his important work as well as many of his lesser-known, though equally important competition entries, furniture designs, and other built projects.

A dual biography of the Sydney Opera House and its elusive master craftsman. Utzon was desperate to escape the fame that followed him after his creation came to fruition in 1966, and he remains resistant to any serious reflection on his life and work. It has taken 30 years of persistent research to gain an understanding of his character.

Jørn Utzon is best known as the architect of the Sydney Opera House, probably the world's most famous modern building and arguably the 20th-century's boldest, most important and impressive work of architecture. All his works – both the large and famous and the small and private – with their brilliant simplicity and honest originality, are masterpieces of 20th-century architecture.This book presents all of Utzon's buildings in more than 400 outstanding color photographs taken by architecture photographer Per Nagel over a period of 25 years. Architect Vibe Udsen reviews each building and architecture critic Henrik Sten Møller presents a portrait of Jørn Utzen the man and the architect. Photographer Per Nagel has collaborated with architect Vibe Udsen for many years in publishing the architectural annual Living Architecture, which is distributed worldwide.

Building a masterpiece explores some of the untold chapters in the long history of the Opera House's gestation, development and completion -- of individuals whose careers were made or broken by the Opera House, the companies whose reputations were secured through their association with the building, and the pioneering construction methods, innovative technologies and methodologies developed to meet the demands of its unprecedented design and challenging construction. The workers who built the building, the politicians, architects and members of the public who championed it and its often beleaguered architect are discussed as is its current world status as a symbol of Australia.To coincide with the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Opera House, this new edition of Building a Masterpiece will include a new chapter on another little known and much misunderstood story: the architect who took over from Utzon and completed the project.

The definitive history of the Sydney Opera House project.

This book introduces and defines the burgeoning concepts of transculturalism and essentialism and how they relate to one another, as articulated with reference to the work of Jørn Utzon. It introduces critical contemporary perspectives of the design thinking and career of this renowned Danish architect, internationally recognised for his competition-winning, iconic design for the Sydney Opera House – an outstanding exemplar of transcultural essentialism in architecture. Transcultural essentialism is analysed through the lens of critical regionalism and architectural phenomenology, with emphasis on the sense of place and tectonics in Utzon’s architectural works. It provides a new understanding of the Danish architect as an early proponent of a still emergent and increasingly relevant direction in architecture. Going beyond biographical studies, it presents a more comprehensive understanding of the broad range of transcultural influences that formed his thinking. The volume includes numerous previously unpublished photographs, drawings, and interviews with Utzon’s family members, former students, and colleagues, offering a significant contribution to the existing body of knowledge for any architecture scholar interested in Utzon’s work and design principles. The book also comprises a Foreword by eminent architecture theorist Juhani Pallasmaa in which he provides insights into the wider architectural and cultural context of Utzon’s worldview.

This book aims at contributing to contemporary investigations and discussions around Nordic Perspectives. It is a critical study concerning architectural history and theory and the significance of the legacy of Danish architectural master Jørn Utzon (1918-2008). Inside the book, the reader will find a selection of fourteen buildings and building complexes built in the second half of the 20th century critically re-addressed through drawings, physical models, and academic essays developed alongside a series of teaching and research activities. Seven of these projects were selected due to their relationship with an import of architectural production to Denmark, while the remaining seven are significant due to an export of architectural production from Denmark, relating to the fact that a large part of Utzon's practice took place abroad.

This book examines the work of three seminal Nordic architects - Alvar Aalto, Jørn Utzon and Sverre Fehn - from a phenomenological perspective, utilising the methodology of 'paradigm' (or 'in the manner of''). Roger Tyrrell explains how the approach of each architect is defined by the three sub-frames of the paradigm: that of the ‘origin’ (arche), that of ‘revealing’ (techne), and that of ‘the poetic conjunction’, in order to gain a holistic understanding of the experiential or phenomenological predisposition of the three architects. Using this method the author describes the commonalties and distinctive qualities of the architecture and design methods of Aalto, Utzon and Fehn. The final chapter projects the intellectual heritage of the three protagonists into the contemporary world, examining the work of practices from the UK, Norway and the USA that each extend this particular way of making place.