Architect

Jørn Utzon

1918–2008 · Danish · 11 buildings on the wall

Jørn Utzon (1918–2008) was a Danish architect best known for the Sydney Opera House and for what he called "additive architecture": buildings made from repeated parts that grow, he said, like a tree. He trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and was influenced early by Gunnar Asplund and Alvar Aalto. He won the Pritzker Prize in 2003.

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Utzon won the 1957 competition for the Sydney Opera House (1973), but in 1966, after a dispute over the roof, he resigned, left Australia and never returned to see it finished. When it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, he was the second architect, after Oscar Niemeyer, to see a work so listed in his lifetime. In Denmark, the Kingo Houses in Helsingør (1958) set dozens of L-shaped courtyard homes, modelled on traditional farmhouses, like "flowers on the branch of a cherry tree". Bagsværd Church near Copenhagen (1976) is lit by daylight under a concrete ceiling of soft, rounded vaults. Can Lis on Mallorca (1972) was shaped by local materials and climate. Jørn Utzon's buildings are studied for their growth from simple parts and their tie to landscape.

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