Peter Hall and the Sydney Opera House: The ‘Lost’ Years 1966-70

Abstract

When Jørn Utzon controversially resigned as architect of the Sydney Opera House in February 1966, he was succeeded by Peter Hall in the government-appointed consortium, Hall Todd & Littlemore. Hall inherited many problems, not the least of which was the unresolved design of the two main auditoria and the building’s enclosing glass walls. Hall’s recommendation in late 1966 to revise the building brief, most significantly changing the function of the dual-purpose main hall to a concert hall, provided the circuit breaker that ended the impasse but profoundly polarised the architectural community. This enduring polemic has compromised historical accounts of the building, obscuring the realities of what was, in effect, an extraordinary tangle of complex issues. Interrogating the hypothesis that Hall’s contribution – hitherto neglected by most writers – warrants greater recognition in the wider narrative of the Sydney Opera House, this study explores the post-Utzon design of, principally, the two main auditoria and the northern glass walls, as well as the political, social, personal and professional issues and pressures with which Hall had to contend in his first four years on the project. It proposes that the ‘bottleneck’ of problems confronting Utzon and then Hall in the mid-1960s evolved from the poorly-articulated competition brief, the technological hurdles arising from Utzon’s brilliant but essentially conceptual winning entry, inadequate management of the project, ill-defined client requirements and the physical constraints of the site itself. The thesis concludes that Peter Hall’s solutions were both justifiable and inevitable and that the difficult decisions made in the wake of Utzon’s departure have contributed substantially to the unprecedented success of the Opera House as a highly popular and functional performance venue.