Building the Impossible was commissioned as part of the 'Building the Syney Opera House' exhibition which took place at Arup's London office in 2014. Find out more about our work on Sydney Opera House: www.arup.com/p...
People rave about the Opera House as an architectural icon. In this video, it's admitted that it's 80% Arup and 20% Utzon, a complaint Utzon himself voiced bitterly before walking away in disgust. One comes to see just how ignorant Australians are of architecture and Utzon's plight when the bullshit spoken and written about it is filtered out to expose the truth of the tragedy that unfolded on Bennelong Point. "The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind." (John Stuart Mill). If the Opera House is indeed iconic, it's in the area of classic stuff-ups, as an Antipodean comedy of errors that brings tears to my eyes.
