J酶rn Utzon's Sydney Opera House

By Pan Yan

Sydney Opera House. Photo: Peter Espina

Following an exhibition in Shanghai and Hong Kong’s Book Fair, Jørn Utzon's Sydney Opera House: a Tribute to Jørn Utzon, a book coauthored by Katarina Stübe and Jan Utzon, arrived in Beijing Wednesday with an issue ceremony held at the Australian Embassy.

Jørn Utzon's Sydney Opera House is a photographic tribute to the spirit of the Sydney Opera House and the man who designed it: Danish architect Jørn Utzon.

Author Katarina Stübe is a young architectural student and photographer. “I fell in love with the building the moment I saw it eight years ago. After compiling images of the Opera House for over fi ve years, I was determined to understand how one of the modern wonders of the world was created. So I knocked on the front door of the home of the Opera House’s architect Jørn Utzon and his wife Lis, in the Danish town of Hellebaek in 2006,” Stübe explained.

With Utzon's endorsement, Stübe began working on the book in 2007. Each picture of the magnifi cent building, showing almost every conceivable angle and in incredible detail, was taken by Stübe and is accompanied by narrative texts, either her own thoughts and feelings or words spoken by the architect himself.

Unfortunately Jørn Utzon died in Copenhagen at the age of 90 in November 2008, before the book was completed. Stübe continued with the project with the help of Jørn Utzon’s son, Jan Utzon, also an architect.

The latter part of the book is mainly by Jan Utzon, in which he candidly talks about the infl uence of the masterpiece on his family, describing anecdotal memories of Sydney, as well as the competition selection criteria by which the Opera House design was won.

The book also includes many previously unpublished sketches and photos from the Utzon archives.

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