Tag Archives: Form follows the money

The fins of the Sydney Opera House

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I visited the Sydney Opera House for the first time in 2008. At the time I was a tourist in Sydney.

It is pointless to write about how iconic the building is for Sydney or even Australia. For most Sydneysiders it is impossible to imagine the city without it. The fins are architectural celebrities and as such much has been written about them. In total we are talking about eight fins in the main building and two in the visitors centre.

Seen from afar the fins are beautiful, however when I approached the Opera House to touch them my initial reaction was, ‘how archaic’. To my surprise the fins were erected in concrete and the white finish is achieved with ceramic tiles. To view a few detailed pictures use this link.

As I studied the fins closely I had flashbacks of seeing colossal structures erected in concrete in countries without the know-how or the craftsmanship to erect high-tech buildings.

However, dazzled at the time, I came to realize another thing. These fins were probably not easy to build at the time of their conception. What is fascinating to acknowledge, is that although we, as humans, had landed on the moon in the 60s, advances in architecture as we are used to see these days, the Guggenheim in Bilbao being a good example, are recent architectural achievements.

In a previous post, “form follows the money”, I have put forward that the construction of buildings is driven by the clients budget, and few are the clients that gamble with their money. This may help to clarify why progress in the constructing industry has been so risk adverse and only recently, with the advent of having public money financing grandeur architecture, did architectural design became the means to elevate the sex appeal of a city.

In that sense, when I rethink the fins of the Sydney Opera House and what was achievable at the time, I am no longer surprised why the construction was the disaster we all know about. The end result is an iconic building that survived the test of time and added character to the city of Sydney.

‘There is more to the fins of the Opera House than meet the eye’, is probably a rightful observation to make.

“Form follows the money” a pragmatic update to the famous sentence by John Sullivan

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This post found its origins in a recent architects’ discussion in Linkedin when I realized the old John Sullivan expression was up for revision.

‘Form follows the money’ should not be taken as the architect designs for the budget available, as in my opinion the same design outcome can come with different cost tags; instead it should be seen as the necessity of the designer to understand the client financial expectations for the project. It helps a great deal if these financials are understood at early concept stages so things flow and a solid investment can be delivered to a client.

I often advocate that building assets is at the core of what architects do. Good design should reflect a positive ROI. Taking things one step further one can say that great design equals a fantastic ROI which leads to the conclusion, in my opinion, that the form should follow the money.