How we work: Jorn Utzon, architect

Utzon, the architect responsible - with Arup - for one of the world's most recognisable buildings, was happy to draw anywhere:

Utzon rarely used a sketchbook, but would draw on anything that was available. He drew the initial plan for an art museum at Silkeborg, in Denmark, with poured salt on a restaurant table in Sydney, which he then photographed with a borrowed camera. The design was based on Buddhist caves he had visited near the Gobi Desert, but the museum was never built.

Another friend recalled Utzon using a charred stick on a pavement to sketch the cross-section of a cave-room he had seen in China, which was to form the basis for his design for a new house; sadly the sketch was washed away by a thunderstorm that same night.

From the same article:

It was thanks to the architect Eero Saarinen that Utzon, much to his surprise, won the competition to build the opera house in 1957. Saarinen appeared late, after several entries had already been assessed, to find Utzon’s scheme among those already rejected. He pulled it out and returned to the jury announcing: “Gentlemen, this is the first prize.”

See also: Calatrava, Niemeyer. More How we work.

Comments

[molly]

One of the things I most love about Utzon's opera house in Sydney is that the sails are surfaces of a sphere, like sections of orange peel. So glad that Saarinen dug out that drawing and declared it was the first prize.

[molly]

One of the things I most love about Utzon's opera house in Sydney is that the sails are surfaces of a sphere, like sections of orange peel. So glad that Saarinen dug out that drawing and declared it was the first prize.

[Kira]

Speaking of work. Always make sure you have good coworkers. Otherwise, you may spend the whole day fixiing what they tried to repair ;) http://www.itssucky.com/my_coworkers/