Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on June 28, 2007.

Designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon and Ove Arup & Partners, the Sydney Opera House is one of the world's most distinctive 20th century buildings, and one of the most famous performing arts venues in the world. It is situated on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbour, close to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The building and its surroundings are one of the best known icons of Australia.

As well as many touring theatre, ballet, and musical productions, the Sydney Opera House is the home of Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony.. It is administered by the Opera House Trust, under the New South Wales Ministry of the Arts.

Description

The Sydney Opera House is an expressionist modern design, with a series of large precast concrete 'shells', each taken from a hemisphere of the same radius, forming the roofs of the structure.

The Sydney Opera House covers 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres) of land. It is 183 metres (605 feet) long and about 120 metres (388 feet) wide at its widest point. It is supported on 588 concrete piers sunk up to 25 metres below sea level. Its power supply is equivalent for a town of 25,000 people. The power is distributed by 645 kilometres of electrical cable.

The roofs of the Sydney Opera House are covered with 1.056 million glossy white and matte cream Swedish-made tiles, though from a distance the tiles look only white. Despite their self-cleaning nature, they are still subject to periodic maintenance and replacement.

The Concert Hall and Opera Theatre at the Sydney Opera House are each contained in the two largest groups of shells, and the other theatres are located on the sides of the shell groupings. The form of the shells is chosen to reflect the internal height requirements, rising from the low entrance spaces, over the seating areas and up to the high stage towers. A much smaller group of shells set to one side of the Monumental steps houses the Bennelong Restaurant.

Although the roof structures of the Sydney Opera House are commonly referred to as shells (as they are in this article), they are in fact not shells in a strictly structural sense, but are instead precast concrete panels supported by precast concrete ribs. The building's interior is composed of pink granite quarried in Tarana and wood and brush box plywood supplied from Wauchope in northern New South Wales.

Performance venues and facilities

The Sydney Opera House contains five main performance spaces, other areas used for performances, a recording studio, five restaurants, and four souvenir shops.

The five venues making up the main performance facilities:

• The Concert Hall, with 2,679 seats, is the home of the Sydney Symphony, and used by a large number of other concert presenters. It contains the Sydney Opera House Grand Organ, the largest mechanical tracker action organ in the world with over 10,000 pipes.
• The Opera Theatre, a proscenium theatre with 1,547 seats, is the Sydney home of Opera Australia and The Australian Ballet.
• The Drama Theatre, a proscenium theatre with 544 seats, is used by the Sydney Theatre Company and other dance and theatrical presenters
• The Playhouse, an end-stage theatre with 398 seats
• The Studio, a flexible space, with a maximum capacity of 400 people, depending on configuration

Other spaces used for performances and other events include:

• The Utzon Room , a small multi-purpose venue, seating up to 210. It is the only interior space to have been designed by Utzon, having been renovated in 2004 under his direction.
• The b>Forecourt, a flexible open-air venue with a wide range of configuration options, including utilising the Monumental Steps as audience seating, used for a range of community events, Live Sites, and special-occasion performances

Besides theatrical productions and concerts, venues at the Sydney Opera House are also used for activities such as conferences, ceremonies, and social functions.