After having won a number of smaller architectural competitions, Utzon submitted his vision for the Sydney Opera House. Joe Cahill, announced an international competition for the design of an opera house for Sydney which attracted more than 200 entries from around the world. In 1956 the New South Wales Premier, The Hon.

In 1949 he received a grant that enabled him and his wife Lis to travel extensively in USA and Mexico, coming into contact with some of the most influential architects and designers of his day, inlcuding those at Frank Lloyd Wright’s school at Taliesin, Mies van der Rohe and Ray and Charles Eames. Utzon was influenced by Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund and later Alvar Aalto, with whom he worked in Finland for a short period after the war.

After graduating in 1942 with a Diploma in Architecture, he worked in Sweden until the end of World War II. A keen sailor, Utzon originally intended to follow his father as a naval engineer, but opted to study architecture at the Copenhagen Royal Academy of Arts. He grew up in the town of Aalborg, where his father was a naval architect, engineer and director of the local shipyard.

Jørn Utzon (pictured above in the centre with two of the architects who chose his entry, Leslie Martin and Eero Saarinen) was born on Apin Copenhagen.

The building transformed his career and, in turn, transformed the image of an entire nation. His vision for a sculptural, curved building on the Harbour broke radically with the cube and rectangular shapes of modernist architecture. The architect of Sydney Opera House, Jørn Utzon was a relatively unknown 38 year old Dane in January 1957 when his entry was announced winner of the international competition to design a ‘national opera house’ for Sydney’s Bennelong Point.

Sydney opera house architecture