Jørn Utzon: The Architect's Universe Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Michael Holm, Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Marcus. Text by Poul Tøjner, Kenneth Frampton, Merte Ahnfeldt-Mollerup, Richard Weston, Joseph Skrzynski, Philip Nobis, Michael Asgaard Andersen, Hans Munk Hansen, Françoise Fromonot, Rafael Moneo. Jørn Utzon is a Danish architect, yet he has become indelibly identified with Sydney, Australia, because of his landmark design for the Sydney Opera House. This catalogue for the first major retrospective of his work shows the scope of a career that has stretched almost 50 years, from his own Hellebaek house (1952) to Can Feliz on Majorca (1994). The essence of Utzon's architecture is a fusion of form and structure--or to put it differently, the structure is the architecture. The sources of his inspiration come mainly from nature and from the visual universes of other cultures like that of the Mayas, which in Utzon's reworking are transformed into an integrated formal idiom that privileges harmony between detail and totality. An interview and numerous essays illuminate the career of the international master, awarded the Pritzker Prize for 2003.
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