About this talk

Running time: 48 minutes

This rare recording by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation features the New South Wales Premier Jo Cahill and Jørn Utzon speaking at the launch of the Sydney Opera House appeal on 7 August 1957. It also includes a discussion between Henry Ashworth (Professor of Architecture at University of Sydney and Chairman of the Opera House competition jury), and his fellow assessors Eero Saarinen and Sir Leslie Martin (Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University), on 29 January 1957.

We are grateful to Warwick Mehaffey, Acoustics Engineer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and advisor to the Sydney Opera House for sourcing the recordings.

You can also hear Saarinen discussing his Modernist influences in Wright Started It, Corbu Gave It Form, Mies Added Control, and Martin about projects he was involved with in the late 1980s in A Constructive Point Of View.