Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect with buildings in Kuwait City and Mallorca but most famous for the Sydney Opera House, died last week of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 90. The Opera House is widely recognized as a classic of modern architecture, but Utzon never actually saw the completed building after infighting and scandal led him to resign from the project and leave Australia for good in 1966. In an interview with Katherine Brisbane that first appeared in 1970 Utzon described how he came up with the breathtaking design:
"It is typical Sydney. Because the site is one you go around, and even sail around, the building needed to be a sculpture, so I spread the two theatres, instead of putting them in a box, and put sails over them to keep the feeling of being on the sea. Underneath I placed this big platform fitting beautifully on the peninsula, repeating the effect of walking on the heads of Sydney harbour. When you see a hill before you, you want to climb up it, and so I put the wide steps in front of people leading into the foyer.
"If I had finished the building I would have carried through this sense of movement. It is treating space like music, almost nonexistent today in architecture."
In 1999 Utzon was commissioned to put his design principles for the Opera House on paper, the better to guide future conservation efforts and updates. So even though he's gone now there's a healthy chance tweaks to the building will eventually restore Utzon's complete original vision. See photos of Utzon and the construction of the Opera House in the gallery here.