Jørn Utzon

Background

Jørn Utzon (1918–2008) was a Danish architect, born in Copenhagen and raised in Aalborg as the son of a naval architect. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1937, graduated in 1942, and then joined Gunnar Asplund in Stockholm. Visits to Alvar Aalto in Helsinki in 1946 and to the United States and Mexico in 1949 shaped his thinking, and in 1950 he opened his own studio in Copenhagen.

Signature Style

Utzon's architecture is rooted in a concern for nature and in what he later called additive architecture, a design that grows from modules the way a tree grows. Fritz Hansen describes his approach as poetic, drawing on natural, organic shapes combined in rhythmic modules, and says the same themes run through his furniture and lamp designs.

Notable Works

• Sydney Opera House: the 1957 competition win; his revised design of 1961 was built on sections of a sphere
• Kingo Houses and Fredensborg Houses: courtyard housing in Denmark
• Bagsværd Church, near Copenhagen, completed in 1976
• National Assembly Building in Kuwait, completed in 1982
• Can Lis and Can Feliz on Mallorca, his own houses
• Utzon Stool and Concert lamp, produced by Fritz Hansen

Legacy

Utzon received the Pritzker Prize in 2003, and the Sydney Opera House was declared a World Heritage Site in 2007, during his lifetime. The Utzon Center in Aalborg, planned with his son Kim, was his last assignment and was completed in 2008, the year he died.