Jørn Utzon and Transcultural Essentialism

Adrian Carter, Marja Sarvimäki

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000457933
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book introduces and defines the burgeoning concepts of transculturalism and essentialism and how they relate to one another, as articulated with reference to the work of Jørn Utzon. It introduces critical contemporary perspectives of the design thinking and career of this renowned Danish architect, internationally recognised for his competition-winning, iconic design for the Sydney Opera House – an outstanding exemplar of transcultural essentialism in architecture.

Transcultural essentialism is analysed through the lens of critical regionalism and architectural phenomenology, with emphasis on the sense of place and tectonics in Utzon's architectural works. It provides a new understanding of the Danish architect as an early proponent of a still emergent and increasingly relevant direction in architecture. Going beyond biographical studies, it presents a more comprehensive understanding of the broad range of transcultural influences that formed his thinking.

The volume includes numerous previously unpublished photographs, drawings, and interviews with Utzon's family members, former students, and colleagues, offering a significant contribution to the existing body of knowledge for any architecture scholar interested in Utzon's work and design principles. The book also comprises a Foreword by eminent architecture theorist Juhani Pallasmaa in which he provides insights into the wider architectural and cultural context of Utzon's worldview.

1

Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003094180-1

The work of the Danish architect Jørn Utzon embodies a visionary approach to architecture that is poetic, noble, and humane; one that is informed by a profound transcultural appreciation of nature and openness to the diversity of human cultures, as a source of inspiration, metaphoric association, and analogy, in a manner that defines him as an exponent of transcultural essentialism. His often sculptural expression of form and structure, however, always derives its essentialist integrity from a rational use of geometry, combined with an authenticity of construction and materials. To achieve his architectural visions, Utzon pushes the boundaries of what is technically feasible and in so doing has established precedents for the use of industrial techniques, prototyping, and advanced component design. The realisation of his most complex masterpiece, the Sydney Opera House, was the first building constructed to make use of computers and can be seen as a precursor to the complexity of architectural constructions that have now become possible by means of computer-aided design.

Jørn Utzon is an architect who, by his own admission, liked to work at the “edge of the possible”¹ and has often been far ahead of his time. His ideas, methods, and approach are now at last becoming compatible with current aspirations and developments in architecture. Though Utzon has long been recognised as an architect of genius, it has previously been difficult to place him in a clearly defined historic context or within a specific movement. Consequently, he has been and is even today overlooked by some historians, or misguidedly considered as an exponent of expressionism. It is only now that Utzon is being more fully appreciated for his significant contribution to modern architecture and the continuing inspiration his approach to architectural design represents.

In 2003, Jørn Utzon was awarded the architectural profession’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Previous recipients have included his good friend from early in his career, the Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn and the noted Australian architect of refined sustainability, Glenn Murcutt, who played a significant role in Utzon’s re-engagement with the Sydney Opera House. These are both architects who have similarly concerned themselves with the expressivity of construction and the relation of modern architecture to a specific context and understanding of place. The Pritzker Prize is perhaps the most significant of a long list of prestigious prizes awarded to Utzon that have included, amongst others, the Aalto Prize, the Royal Institute of British Architect’s Gold Medal, and Denmark’s highest cultural honour, the Sonning Prize. Though awards in themselves had an appreciated, but limited importance for the retiring Utzon, who never courted such accolades, they are an indication of the enduring and still very actual significance of Utzon’s work. As Ada Louise Huxtable, the American architectural critic and member of the Pritzker jury, commented

It has taken half a century to understand the true path of architecture in our time, to pick up the threads of continuity and the signposts to the future, to recognize the broader and deeper meaning of 20th century work that has been subjected to doctrinaire modernist criticism and classification, or tabled as history. In this light, the work of Jørn Utzon takes on a particular richness and significance.²

Figure 1.1 Sydney Opera House.

Source: Photo by Adrian Carter

Jørn Utzon’s work is emblematic of a Scandinavian culture that has long prided itself on the attainment of quality in architecture and design, through the simple, honest yet noble synthesis of form, material, and function, motivated by social values. His Scandinavian sensibility and integrity of design continue the legacy of the earlier, great Nordic architects Asplund, Korsmo, and Aalto. To this specific cultural background Utzon combines a profound fascination for the ancient legacies of the Mayan civilisation, China, Japan and the Islamic world, a sense of architecture as art, an innovative approach to the use of technology, and a natural understanding of organic structures in relation to specific context and conditions. Utzon intuitively, but with great insight, could understand the essential qualities of that which he experienced in the world, whether in the natural environment or in the diverse cultures, from ancient to modern that he encountered and synthesise that understanding into his own work, in accordance with the given context.

Figure 1.2 Conceptual sketch for an airport, separating passengers and services from planes vertically.

Source: © The Utzon Archives/Utzon Center

“Utzon transcends the schism that has existed between a phenomenological understanding of architecture, with its appreciation of the specific qualities of place and the modernist use of the latest universally applicable technology. The immense breadth of his architecture ranges from the most modest, yet handsome and humane Kingo houses, to the supreme sculptural abstraction and technical innovation of the Sydney Opera House and the understated monumentality of the Bagsværd Church with its poetic undulating ceiling, through to such visionary unrealised projects as the submerged Silkeborg Art Museum”³ and sketch proposal for an underground airport, that still fire the imagination. It is Utzon’s ability to achieve a poetic humane architecture, while fully utilising and pushing the boundaries of industrialisation to pursue that goal that underlies the paradigmatic nature of Utzon’s work, which is ever more relevant today.⁴

The focus and genesis of this book owes much to an inspired and inspirational gathering of architects, artists, and idealists, that Utzon no doubt would have found empathetic to his own thinking, much of which had been informed and inspired by Alvar Aalto, whom Utzon greatly admired. Certainly, Utzon would have been in good company with those that were gathered together for the 6th International Aalto Symposium held at the Alvar Aalto designed campus of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in August 1994 on the thematic topic of “Architecture of the Essential.” In that context, Markku Komonen, the Chairman of the organising committee explained by way of introduction that “in the personality of Alvar Aalto, idealism and realism combined like the poles of a dynamo whose opposing forces form the source of its energy” and that “he was a creative artist and idealist for whom social and technical issues were also at the very core of his architectural oeuvre” but that “a significant, but less well known phase of Aalto’s life work occurred during and immediately after the Second World War, the subsequent reconstruction period of Finnish society, the nation was in a state of crisis, material and technical resources down to a minimum.”⁵ As Komonen further remarked, “the extreme circumstances following the aftermath of the war forced people to re-evaluate what was essential and necessary and to eliminate all excess. An inventive mind might manage to create more from less.”⁶

Speaking in the mid-1990s, at a time of seemingly ever-increasing prosperity, brought about by unsustainable economic growth, Komonen’s concluding comments are as relevant today, if not even more so in an era of more immediate awareness of the consequences of global climate change and pandemics. Then he said that “the present state of the world is also in a situation which requires serious evaluation and balancing of values and resources.” There is a “need to discuss what should be the essence of the art and technique of building,” a “discussion that does not revolve around questions of architectural style, but rather on the fundamental material and spiritual living conditions vital for our culture to survive and prosper.”⁷

The opening keynote talk of this symposium on the “Architecture of the Essential” was presented by the esteemed architectural historian Paul Oliver, whom Utzon also greatly appreciated for his comprehensive studies and documentation of traditional vernacular architecture across the globe. Oliver defined the most essential form of building, vernacular architecture, as that which “is not architect designed, but is customarily owner-built or community built” and irrespective of “whether it is sacred, rural or urban, permanent or temporary, vernacular architecture is related to its environmental contexts” that is in response to the environmental conditions, that include the climate and the use of available material and “is built to meet the needs, values, traditions, economies and ways of life of the cultures that produce it.”⁸

Oliver explained what draws contemporary architects to the vernacular architecture of the past and present, both within their own cultures and elsewhere, and suggested that there were two reasons as to what motivated that interest and what they hoped to gain from such studies. The first reason, as he stated, is that “it has to admitted, is basically self-indulgent and self-interested: architects are often drawn to the vernacular for what they may gain from it, as a fount of inspiration, as a source of forms and design details, and confirmation of their own personal design approach.” The second reason for the interest on vernacular architecture, he said, “is more altruistic, based on a desire to improve living conditions, to provide better housing, and to enhance the quality of the life of the poor, the disadvantaged or the victims of disasters.”⁹ Both reasons Oliver gave could be justified, but he suggested that neither approach could be based upon subjective opinions and the evaluation of architects, based on their own professional criteria. According to Oliver, “If we are to understand the vernacular traditions of widely different cultures, we need to understand what makes its architecture essential to each culture, within its own terms.”¹⁰

According to Oliver, when we speak of an Architecture of the Essential, at least with regard to vernacular architecture, there are at least two shades of meaning. One understanding that relates “to that which is necessary, that which is vital to life support, that which is indispensable” where the essential relates to the “resources of the environment, and to the resourcefulness by which they are exploited and constructed in architecture.” However, as he points out, there is another meaning of the Essential, “that which is of the Essence, that which is fundamental to the purpose of life itself, which finds expression in the motivation to build and in the meaning of each architectural tradition to its creators and user.”¹¹ Having presented and discussed the vernacular architectural traditions of many different world cultures, past and present, Oliver concluded with a caveat, that:

To regard the vernacular as a mo...