Are we as hopeless as Elizabeth Farrelly thinks?

Denmark.dk and other reports that Australia is finally listing Danish architect Utzon's masterpiece the Sydney Opera House as a national landmark have appeared with approval in Copenhagen but inspired another lecture from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Culture News Denmark.dk 12 July 2005 Sydney Opera House chosen as national treasure The Australian government is seeking to make the Sydney Opera House, designed by Joern Utzon, a world landmark. The Sydney Opera House, designed by Denmark's Joern Utzon, has been placed on the list of Australia's national landmarks. Australian Minister for Environment and Heritage Ian Campbell told the APP news service that the government will also work to have the opera house added to the list of the world's cultural treasures. Campbell said that the building's unique design had helped to place Australia on the world map. 'It's fitting that after 30 years, we now acknowledge that Sydney's opera house is important for our national heritage,' said the minister.

Meanwhile Elizabeth Farrelly demonstrated her all too familiar and boorish cynicism bordering on a cultural cringe in her Saturday SMH column referring to the painful birth of the Opera House as the example of "our devotion, in Sydney, to fully fledged cultural mediocrity."

A recent study in the Harvard Design Magazine describes the Sydney Opera House as a "tragedy in world architecture" compared, for example, with the "triumph" of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim at Bilbao. Not only did Sydney cop a 1400 per cent cost blow-out and a building unsuited to opera, we also contrived, through government and cultural incompetence, to "destroy the career of its architect, Joern Utzon and [so] ... rob the world of the oeuvre of an undisputed master". The London Review of Books takes similar delight in describing the part played by the characteristic venality, corruption and philistinism of "King George's gulag" in turning Utzon's fabled interiors into "a mess of tacky ideas reminiscent of a bingo hall in, say, Middlesbrough". All this is reasonably familiar in spirit, of course, being only a slight advance on our own standard view of the Opera House fiasco as an exercise in advanced knee-jerk poppy cutting.

On a recent visit to the Louisiana collection outside Copenhagen I spent an inspiring day wandering the complex of unique buildings set amongst a breathtaking landscape housing Denmark's largest collection of modernist art. We traveled up the seaside along the concrete highway built by the Nazis for landing bombers, to see the Utzon exhibition - an architectural retrospective.

Viewing early Utzon drawings, houses and office towers, some built - most as usual not realised, shone light on the brilliance that created a building that sings to our harbour and city. The finale of the comprehensive exhibition was the Opera House (closely followed by the cathedral style Kuwait Parliament clearly the love child of our Harbour). There was a matter of fact video display about the Opera House project and it did cover the controversial relationship the Dane had with the governments of the day. I sank as my English version screen told of Utzon's controversial departure whilst the same story unfolded in Danish all around me.

We entered an amazing room seemingly purpose designed to display half a dozen models of the Opera House including one on loan form the Power House Museum. That was when I decided to risk Danish opinion on the relationship between Denmark's favourite architect and Australia (arguably their favourite Country at the moment thanks to Princess Mary). "Ahh yes that was initially resented by us but now we move on - "it's like the war," said one elderly man. A middle-aged woman commented that "Utzon is like all architects - he paid no heed to a budget," and one young man, "Utzon was not sacked, he walked off the job because he was not being paid anymore - he had massively over-spent the budgets." The apparent sentiment that Danes can put the difficulties in context and behind them to admire the masterpiece that was created in spite of the pain.

I was raised as a low church country Anglican to believe that nothing worth having in life is ever easy to come by. Hard work and painful sacrifice were always required. This applies to the creation of great art - usually born from pain and struggle. Architecture as the 'mother of all art' (Frank Lloyd Wright) is no different. Give me a painful Opera House any day to the utilitarian hassle free Olympic Stadium - a monument to government, construction and architectural pragmatism and a missed (and surely painful) architectural opportunity (not just my view but also Harry Seidler who designed a bus shelter for our 2000 Olympics). Give me a painful Sydney Town Hall (50 years of controversy in its day) to the uninspired extension to the NSW State Parliament or the eye popping bore of the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

Farrelly continues her finger wagging at Sydneysiders making it clear we are probably not up to the job at East Darling Harbour:

And now, at East Darling Harbour, is our chance to show the world we can still do it; still take a site to rival any in the world, and turn it into a shining exemplar of the bog-ordinary. In less than a month from now you'll be able to judge for yourself, when the entries from the 140-odd registrants will be exhibited. So far, about 30 per cent are from overseas. Will they achieve the levels of mediocrity we expect?

These days it is unusual for the Sydney Morning Herald not to give us the answers with the sermons they publish about what we are all doing wrong. In this instance she just threw the dead cat on the table and left it there for us to think about. I guess we will have to wait for Farrelly's 'I told you so' in a few months time as she boards her flight at the pragmatic airport. I for one believe revisiting all the pain (even if it is a uniquely Australian experience) would be worth it to build an equivalent opera house on the site.