Unfolding Utzon:The Nature of Utzon’s Approach for Structural Design

The Danish architect Jørn Utzon's architecture is a fusion of form and structure inspired by nature and the visual universe of different cultures. The organic conception of form is clearly evoked in much of Utzon’s architecture following his genesis idea of an “Additive Architecture” founded in his inspiration from nature where he saw that an infinite variety can be generated by a modest number of elements. The paper outlines how Utzon used the repetition of a component as the expedient by which complex geometrical and constructional problems can be rationally solved, as in the case of the shells of the Sydney Opera House