Paul Keating on Woolley’s Opera House plan »

Paul Keating has a fun piece in the SMH about Ken Woolley’s plan for a new, unsympathetic opera theatre on Sydney’s Opera House forecourt:

Joern Utzon gave Sydney not only the greatest building of the 20th century but one unique in all history. Its plastic yet classic forms confounded his competitors, who entered designs based on their idolatry of the steel beam and the box-like structures which grew, Meccano-like, from their drawing boards.

A giant box dropped into this space, I believe, has absolutely no merit. And to provide a theatre on the scale proposed by Woolley would need to be much larger, far larger than that illustrated in the Herald. A major auditorium will look like a major auditorium.

Ken Woolley says:

“Some critics will feel it compromises Utzon’s original vision, while others will say it just will not work … It does demand courage. Only the brave would dare build something near the sacred monument.”

Wow, such clever and subtle mind-trickery there from Ken. We’re not cowards just because we don’t like your plan.