Why Jørn Utzon Won The Pritzker Prize

In April 2003 Jørn Utzon, who was 85, was awarded the Pritzker Prize. An Architect’s “Nobel”. This “Nobel” prize was awarded annually to honor a living architect or architects whose work is demonstrated qualities of talent, vision and commitment. Their work would have to produce a consistent and significant contribution to humanity and the environment through architecture. Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House was a masterpiece and a great iconic building of the twentieth century. Its beauty has become known throughout the world and has become a symbol not for only the city, but for the whole country and continent. The Pritzker Prize places Utzon in the pantheon of the greatest contemporary architects but mark a career that failed to reach its full

People all over the world including Utzon were entrants to the Opera House competition, but it was unrealistic for some of the entrants that were overseas to visit the proposed site. The promontory selected for the building was in July 1957. After six months Utzon was announced that he had won the competition for the new building. Utzon studied for the promontory from photographs and postcards which he then interpreted the location. When he first visits Bennelong Point he exclaimed to a Sydney Morning Herald reporter, “It’s absolutely breathtaking. There’s no opera site in the world to compare with it…this site is even more beautiful than in the photographs from which I worked” (Murray 3). The National Theatre Movement of Australia had pinpointed the selection for the future Bennelong Point Opera House in the early 1940s. Eugene Goossens, the conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra was one of the driving forces behind the Opera House project. He was invited to take over the orchestra by Charles Moses, the General Manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, but Goossens was being paid more from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. To convince him to leave the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Moses arranged that he would be the Director of the Sydney Conservatorium, which was located in the Royal Botanic Gardens

Problems began to rise when people started to debate about if the competition should be only for architects that are Australian practitioners or architects from around the world. The NSW Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects suggested that it should people only architects that are Australian practitioners. The Sydney Opera House Executive Committee decided to go against what the NSW Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects suggested and decided to make it an international open competition hoping that the competition would attract the best talent in the world. Even though they made it international the do still gave a little more sympathy for the local Australian architects. Goossens was born in England and has had an extreme international career; Moses was also born in England and then moved to Australia in the 1920s. Ashworth was from England but only arrived in Sydney in 1949 because he was serving in the army in India. It was then agreed that Leslie Martin, chief architect of the London County Council and architect of the Royal Festival Hall in London, and Eero Saarinen, architect of a number of major buildings in America including the Kresge Auditorium on Massachusetts Institute of Technology Campus and TWA terminal at Idlewild, which becomes Kennedy later on, Airport. Then the other judges would be people who were Australian nationality Cobden Parkes, NSW