Peter Hall and The Sydney Opera House

In her recently published The Poisoned Chalice: Peter Hall and The Sydney Opera House, architecture and design curator Dr Anne Watson has forensically researched the story of the building the Sydney Opera House. Combing Peter Hall’s archives and interviewing architects and designers who worked with him, she has exploded the myth that what was designed after Utzon’s departure was heavily compromised and thus not worth bothering about. In fact, the Sydney Opera House is the work of two – not one – architects. Jorn Utzon and Peter Hall. To discuss the story of the controversy over the completion of the Sydney Opera House, Michael Baume AO, former Federal Arts Minister and author of The Sydney Opera House Affair, joined Anne Watson to address The Sydney Institute on Wednesday 8 November 2017.

PETER HALL AND THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

MICHAEL BAUME

Anne Watson’s book is a remarkable manifestation of the truth that in order to praise Utzon, you don’t have to accept the conventional wisdom of vilifying Hall and erasing him from the history of the Sydney Opera House. All the key participants – Utzon, Hall and Ove Arup — all deserve their share of recognition; until this book, Hall has been disgracefully excluded from the altar of Utzon worship.

My involvement here follows Anne’s revelation that my book, published more than 50 years ago, on the 1966 departure of Utzon from the Sydney Opera House, was a key factor in the breakdown of negotiations to get Utzon to return to finish his Opera House, which he never saw as a completed building.

Apart from the evident fact that so much information damaging to Utzon in my book (fact-checked by Hall, as stated in the introduction) clearly came from either the project’s structural engineers Ove Arup and Partners or the NSW government, Utzon was especially upset by a chapter in my book written by Peter Hall entitled “Function is not a dirty word” – an obvious slap at those whose only concern was form.

Of specific concern to Utzon was that Hall’s chapter included a drawing of his idea to make comprehensive changes to Utzon’s plans for the nature of the interior of the main hall.  Hall had justified this by writing, correctly, that the requirements of the Opera House’s major user were not being met in Utzon’s concept, as indicated in the “drawings showing a good deal of design intent…but were not working drawings” that Utzon left. Utzon’s angry hyperbolic response was that these changes “would destroy completely the architecture of the Sydney Opera House”, a cry repeated ad absurdum by Utzon acolytes.

Because my book, written when the sails were still under construction and completion was still seven years away, did not spring to Utzon’s defence in the sage of his departure in line with the trendy view of “the genius versus the Goths”, but rather concluded, in what Anne graciously acknowledges as an “incisive summation” that “this is not a story of goodies and baddies; it is a story of bad decisions made for good reasons, of good intentions that went wrong, or personal tensions that built up to a point that made it impossible for the project to go on as it was… of an artist who for many reasons (including a great deal that were not his fault) made a mess of things”.

But I dared to say that the available evidence “prompts very real criticism of the architect’s handling of the project.” But not all of the evidence could be printed in my book, having been subject not only to legal threats from Utzon, but also objections from senior members of Ove Arup and Partners, the engineering firm responsible for bringing Utzon’s sketched concept into a strikingly different reality but who, apparently, did not want to be blamed for publicly undermining Utzon. By the way, a recent biography of Ove Arup provides evidence that overwhelmingly endorses my stance.

For the reality is that Utzon’s days were numbered when he and Arups fell out. Because Utzon had never built any major structure, the NSW government accepted the advice of the adjudicators of the design competition that Utzon won, to appoint the engineers as the principle contractor, not, as is customary, the architect. For years, Arup and Utzon effectively conspired to conceal from the NSW government (and its incompetent committee that acted as the client) the reality of open-ended costs; that this building was not going to be a traditional one with a steel frame from which cladding would be attached, but would be self-supporting concrete shells.

This had never been done before, and still hasn’t been; the Opera house sails are not six inch shells but six feet thick massive arches. After years of Arup’s unsuccessful attempts to build Utzon’s sketches (which almost sent Arups broke and caused division and resignations within the firm) followed by more years of protecting Utzon from governmental concerns about rising costs, delays and lack of progress with working drawings, eventually Arups called time. That falling out (manifested by Utzon bricking-up the connecting door between their on-site offices) meant the end of Utzon, with the only difference between a Labor and a Coalition government being the manner and timing of his departure.

Back in 1967, my book was subjected to a cacophony of attacks from those who, like Harry Seidler, decreed that by getting rid of Utzon the NSW government had “destroyed” the Opera House. Despite Harry and the vicious campaign against Hall, the building that Hall and his team completed was not “destroyed”; on the contrary, it is acknowledged as one of the greatest of the twentieth century, with Hall being awarded international architectural honours. But, in Australia, Utzon-worship and Hall-denigration has meant that the Hall team has never been given the credit that is their due. At the Opera House Trust’s 40^th anniversary of the Opera House’s opening, the only hero was Utzon.

Attacks on my book included an accusation that I had a bias against Utzon which is repeated in Anne’s otherwise excellent book. I certainly held no political bias; if anything at that stage in my life I had a far closer relationship with Premier Jack Renshaw’s Labor NSW government; I had inside knowledge that Premier Renshaw wanted the excessively costly long-standing Opera House running sore fixed even if it meant Utzon’s departure; the incoming Coalition state government acted on the Renshaw government’s demands for working drawings “or else no payments”; subsequent promises by Renshaw’s public works minister Ryan to restore Utzon if Labor could be returned to power were in stark contrast to his threats to Utzon when minister.

If I had any bias, it was not before but after my undertaking volumes of research, when I came to the view that I was more concerned about the future of the Opera House than I was about the future of Utzon. How fortunate that, as shown in Anne Watson’s book, Utzon’s sketchy plans and indications of intentions were so dramatically changed by Peter Hall and his team so as to bring about the conversion of Utzon’s beautiful sculpture into a workable building that went a lot further towards achieving the clearly-stated requirements of the competition that Utzon was unable to meet.

The distinguished architect Andrew Andersons, when launching Anne’s book in the Northern foyer of the Opera House under Hall’s magnificent glass wall, said that while he was perpetually thankful for Utzon’s vision he was also grateful to Peter Hall and his talented team of collaborators and consultants that gave us “this masterpiece of twentieth century architecture”. Anne’s book should shame those whose unyielding animus towards Peter Hall drove him to despair and early death; if this book leads to a belated proper acknowledgment of the role Hall and his team played in Australia’s greatest building, it will be too late for Peter Hall, but not too late for posterity.