Name: Jørn Utzon

Date of Birth: 9th April, 1918

Death: 29th November, 2008

Country: Copenhagen, Denmark

Jørn Utzon (1918 – 2008) was a Danish architect most notable for designing the Sydney Opera House in Australia. When the Sydney Opera House was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, he became only the second person to have his work recognised as a World Heritage Site while he was still alive. Utzon has created a style marked by monumental civic buildings and unobtrusive housing projects. He incorporates the balanced discipline of Asplund, the sculptural quality of Alvar Aalto, and the organic structures of Frank Lloyd Wright into his designs. Influenced by architectural tradition, he attempts to create architecture for living that adheres to a strict structural and constructive process. 
Utzon always considers site conditions and program requirements before he designs each building. He transcends architecture as art and develops his forms into poetic inventions that possess thoughtful programming, structural integrity and sculptural harmony.

Jørn Utzon (1918-2008) was born in Copenhagen in 1918. He studied at the Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, under Kay Fisker and Steen Eiler Rasmussen. After spending the war years studying with Erik Gunnar Asplund, Utzon travelled through Europe, the United States and Mexico. When the Sydney Opera House designed by this Danish Architect, was declared a World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007, he became only the second person to have his work recognised as a World Heritage Site while he was still alive.

 His Inspiration:

Utzon has created a style marked by monumental civic buildings and unobtrusive housing projects. He incorporates the balanced discipline of Asplund, the sculptural quality of Alvar Aalto, and the organic structures of Frank Lloyd Wright into his designs along with characteristics from Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. Influenced by their architectural tradition, he attempts to create architecture for living that adheres to a strict structural and constructive process. Utzon always considers site conditions and program requirements before he designs each building. In his work, Utzon displays a Nordic sensibility to nature and integrity of design that strives for the attainment of quality in architecture and design, through the simple, honest yet noble synthesis of form, material and function, motivated by social values. To this essentially regional response, Utzon combines a fascination for the architectural legacies of foreign cultures. These influences include the architecture of the ancient Mayan civilisation, as well as the Islamic world, China and Japan.

His Philosophy:

His concrete-phenomenological approach to the world has been able to rescue architecture from the sterile impasse of late-modernism. In his works the basic elements of lived space become present: the earth, the sky and the `between` of human existence.” Jørn Utzon’s architecture ranges from the modest to the monumental, from the Kingo courtyard houses, the finest Scandinavian example of humane housing, to the sculptural abstraction and technical innovation of the Sydney Opera House, that has come to define the iconic identity not only of Sydney, but also Australia. From the understated monumentality of the Bagsværd Church with its poetic cloud-like undulating ceiling, through to such visionary unrealised projects as the subterranean Silkeborg ArtMuseum. Utzon’s work embodies a visionary approach to architecture that is site specific and poetic, tectonic and humane. Informed by a profound appreciation of nature and diversity of human cultures, as sources of inspiration and analogy, combined with a sense of architecture as art and an innovative approach to the use of technology .His Philosophy transcends architecture as art and develops his forms into poetic inventions that possess thoughtful programming, structural integrity and sculptural harmony.

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