Lucky to Have the Opera House

Sir: Events at the time of the assessment, in the 1950s, of the International Architectural Competition for the design of the Sydney Opera House indicate that Australia is extremely lucky to have had Jørn Utzon’s design realised.

In the mid-1980s I was a staff member in the Faculty of Architecture, University of New South Wales, and the dean of the faculty was Professor Henry Ingham Ashworth, who had been Chairman of the Opera House Committee. Ashworth was one of the key figures in the promulgation of the Opera House Competition. The assessors of the competition were Ashworth, Eero Saarinen, already a famous architect with an international reputation, Sir Leslie Martin from England, and Cobden Parkes, the New South Wales Government Architect.

At a staff meeting in the faculty office Ashworth began reminiscing about the Opera House Competition assessment to some of us senior staff. Ashworth indicated that the assessors met as arranged but Saarinen was three days late. While waiting for Saarinen to arrive, the other assessors had established two categories: rejected schemes and those considered to still be in contention.

On entering the room where all the entries were temporarily stored, Saarinen proceeded to the pile of rejects: he withdrew Utzon’s drawings and, without any consultation with the other assessors, declared that Utzon’s design was the winner.

Eliel Saarinen, Eero’s father, had architectural offices in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and later in Hamden, Connecticut. Both Utzon and Eero Saarinen worked in Eliel’s office. In the period before the Opera House Competition was promulgated Eero Saarinen was designing airports, and the very large spans of the Ice Hockey Pavilion at Yale University involving three-dimensional curved structures and cantilevers akin to those proposed later for the Sydney Opera House. The Ice Hockey Pavilion was found to have major structural defects in design.

Utzon’s design received cogent criticism from engineers Pier Luigi Nervi and Felix Candela who wrote immediately that the building could not be built in the form proposed: in particular the shells could not be designed as three-dimensional structures if there was a ridge down the centre of each shell. The crises that ensued over the design of the shells are well known.

After a stormy relationship with the New South Wales government, Utzon resigned from the position of architect for the Sydney Opera House and ultimately set up a private practice in Denmark.

Peter Proudfoot
Roseville, NSW

Sir: I recently had the pleasure of reading Joe Dolce’s feature on Mrs Wilson (July-August 2019). Truly outstanding. I thank him for engaging with the subject so intelligently and with great sensitivity. I, and many of my friends, found his conclusions excellent talking points. A really fine piece of cultural journalism and analysis. Truly most impressive. 

Tim Crook
Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies
Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Sir: In the excellent article on Des Sturgess (July-August 2019) one matter was overlooked that I consider significant.

Des Sturgess was the author, or leader of our team, to prepare and introduce the Northern Territory Criminal Code, replacing the old Criminal Law Consolidation Act and Ordinance of 1867. It was landmark legislation and Des should be recognised for it.

Paul Everingham
via email

Sir: The debate concerning a constitutional indigenous recognition referendum in the July-August edition is an intriguing one, but it must be remembered that this will only be a transient phase. In time to come, all those born of Australian parents will be able to proudly claim Aboriginal ancestry. By then, all the Aboriginal DNA will have been fully homogenised into the Australian genome by means of the one-way street of genetic entropy, when it will account for about 1.2 per cent of the total.

Peter Rymill
via email

Sir: David van Gend writes an interesting piece on euthanasia (July-August 2019), but it doesn’t resolve the issue for me. I have two questions for David.

Q1. In 1912 Captain Oates walked out of his tent and into a blizzard saying, “I may be a little while.” Oates knew that his frost-bitten feet were impeding the progress of the remnants of Scott’s party and that their chances of making it back to base camp, and their survival, would be enhanced without him. The various versions of this event portray Oates as a hero, adding, “Greater love has no man than that he sacrifice his life for his friends.” The same could be said of those brave people choosing to face a firing squad rather than betray a compatriot, as well as many others in battle circumstances, doing it for the team. So, my question is, how and why has society changed to now condemn, or see as illegal, such sacrifices?

Q2. What is the difference between Captain Oates’s motive and my motive to not waste my humble wealth on very costly “aged care” to prolong a miserable existence rather than pass it on to my children? Add to that the unintended consequence of freeing up the health budget (and it does have its limits) for ill children?

Many important issues are near-impossible to discuss (like euthanasia and climate change) because the language around these issues has been corrupted, often deliberately. I detest the words euthanasia and suicide; they are far too narrow and prescriptive for describing the circumstances. For the former, why not dying with dignity?

Lastly, why do legislators need to be involved at all in any of this very personal business? Surely, a doctor in collaboration with a family would be able to discern any untoward, even evil intent? Our lives are already very much over-regulated and constrained by “political correctness”. I do not want my headspace invaded with judgments about whether particular actions I choose had, or did not have, an intention to kill. I do not want to dissect the “unintended consequences” to the nth degree. I believe that over 95 per cent of people are of good will, and we already have laws to deal with the other 5 per cent.

Aert Driessen
via email