The Sydney Opera House is a good example, actually.
It's an iconic building. Australia is frequently represented by a picture of the opera house in front the the harbour bridge, possibly with Uluru in the middle distance (it's just outside Sydney, apparently).
There's just one problem. It's not a very good opera house. The structural requirements make it impossible to have an ochestral pit for the musicians, and the shape of the building make it very difficult to have all the usual invisible magic that makes opera work smoothly. It's cramped and oddly shaped.
The SOH is a perfect example of the triumph of style over substance. The New South Welsh who commissioned it are now facing a $1 billion dollar bill for maintenance over the coming decade.
Funny you should say that: I've always wondered how it worked in the inside.
I'm not claiming it is a great opera house, but it is a very good example of using modern building tools.
When Utzon died, one of our (Danish) newspapers explained that the required maintenance is now necessary because the architects original plan to cap the "top-seams" with metal was judged too expensive, and some plastic-sealant ("Caulk" ?) were filled into the seam instead, and that has allowed moisture to seep into the construction. I have no idea if this is true or not.
Basically Utzon designed it to look awesome. And it does. As a work of sculpture it's really lovely, and the engineering to make it stand up is difficult and impressive.
But as I said, Utzon and his offsiders obviously did not care about the actual purpose of the building, or whether their beautiful design would be at all practical. It's not. Even Frank Gehry, whose work I find to be obnoxious, has managed to design a semi-practical music hall.
It's not really architecture, in a Vitruvian sense. It's walk-through sculpture.
Your remarks are superficially plausible and fit many people's pet theories about architects. The only flaw is that they don't have any relation to the reality of the construction of the actual Sydney Opera House.
The internals of the building were not built to Utzon's design; they were redesigned and built after Utzon resigned in 1966.
> The internals of the building were not built to Utzon's design; they were redesigned and built after Utzon resigned in 1966.
My understanding is that Utzon's original design was, basically, impossible. The new design was a compromise made during intense negotiations with physical reality after Utzon had quit.
The further point is that those compromises rule out little things such as the ochestral pit or the tower. Things that are sorta kinda really really useful for ochestras.
If it was up to me I'd build the usual mausoleum somewhere else and turn the "opera house" into something else. A museum perhaps.
> Your remarks are superficially plausible and fit many people's pet theories about architects.
Availability bias. We never hear about the vast majority of architects who stick to designing safe, sensible and non-hideous buildings. We do hear about self-promoting designers of monuments to their own egos, such as Gehry. And naturally this tilts the public view of architecture.
As a kid I wanted to be an architect. Maybe I'm suffering from armchair expertise. "I use buildings, therefore I'm an architect".
But sometimes mistakes are so visible that end users can point them out. My personal bête noire is the business school building at the University of Western Australia. Just a stunning array of dumb details, but it's visually bold and jaunty. I guess that's what sold.
It's an iconic building. Australia is frequently represented by a picture of the opera house in front the the harbour bridge, possibly with Uluru in the middle distance (it's just outside Sydney, apparently).
There's just one problem. It's not a very good opera house. The structural requirements make it impossible to have an ochestral pit for the musicians, and the shape of the building make it very difficult to have all the usual invisible magic that makes opera work smoothly. It's cramped and oddly shaped.
The SOH is a perfect example of the triumph of style over substance. The New South Welsh who commissioned it are now facing a $1 billion dollar bill for maintenance over the coming decade.
edit: decade, not 5 years.