A specialist partnership frustrated: Utzon and Symonds at Sydney

The resignation of the Sydney Opera House architect, Jørn Utzon, marked the culmination of an increasingly frustrating phase of the project. Utzon had intended a partnership between designer, consultant, contractor and subcontractor to develop technical design solutions which would not have been possible under normal competitive tendering. The government rejected this. Here are examined the issues which underpinned the relationship between the architect seeking technical perfection and the manufacturing engineer seeking the fullest artistic expression of his product.