雪梨歌劇院設計者約恩·烏松2008年11月29日在丹麥辭世，享壽90歲，事實上，他從未親眼見過完工的白色風帆
丹麥建築師約恩·烏松（Jørn Utzon）於2008年11月29日在哥本哈根家中離世，享壽90歲。他1957年在國際競圖中擊敗232件作品，贏得雪梨歌劇院設計權，卻因預算與工期爭議在1966年離開澳洲，終生未曾親眼見到完工的建築。他的作品數量不多，2003年獲普立茲克建築獎，外界普遍視為對雪梨設計的遲來肯定。
雪梨歌劇院設計者離世，享壽90歲
2008年11月29日，設計雪梨歌劇院（Sydney Opera House）的丹麥建築師約恩·烏松（Jørn Utzon）在哥本哈根家中去世，享壽90歲。雪梨港畔那組如風帆、也像海洋生物的白色殼形屋頂，是20世紀最具辨識度的地標之一，烏松的名字也因此與單一建築緊緊相連。他的人生同時承受盛名與傷痛：贏得競圖時默默無名，離開澳洲後，終其一生沒有親眼見到完工的歌劇院。
睡夢中離世，家人在身邊
據兒子金·烏松（Kim Utzon）對美聯社（Associated Press）的說法，烏松在週六清晨於睡夢中因心臟病發作去世。丹麥《政治報》（Politiken）的報導則提到，家人在身旁陪伴，並說烏松近期接連動過幾次手術，從26日起身體極為不適，被送往哥本哈根北部的治療中心。兩份報導對死因的描述略有不同，共通的是他走得安靜，身邊有家人。遺族包括妻子、兒子 Jan 與 Kim、女兒 Lin 及數名孫輩，兩個兒子都接受過建築訓練。
1957年一場競圖，38歲的烏松成為意外贏家
烏松1918年4月19日生於哥本哈根，1957年參加雪梨歌劇院國際競圖時才38歲，在國際建築圈並不算知名。他的方案是在白色混凝土殼狀屋頂之下，安置五座觀眾廳，擊敗另外232件參賽作品，打動了包括埃羅·薩里寧（Eero Saarinen）在內的評審團。聯合國教科文組織（UNESCO）在2007年將雪梨歌劇院列為世界文化遺產。
預算、工期與政治風向，讓名作變成憾事
歌劇院的委託對烏松是喜憂參半。1959年，早期力挺此案的新南威爾斯州州長喬·卡希爾（Joe Cahill）驟逝，之後爭議不斷。工程預算約700萬澳元，最終花費超過1億澳元，加上工期延宕，烏松在1966年憤而辭職離開澳洲，比歌劇院1973年完工早7年。後續由政府指派的建築師接手完成室內，劇場配置因此大幅更動。烏松從未再回到澳洲。
「他是雕塑家，不是建築師」：爭議兩端的說法
爭議期間，新南威爾斯州公共工程廳長戴維斯·休斯（Davis Hughes）是最強烈的反對者之一，2002年他向澳洲廣播公司（ABC）表示：「你可以說殼是他做出來的，他是雕塑家，不是建築師。」支持烏松的一方則認為，預算本來就不切實際，甚至可能是為了取得政治許可而刻意低估，而問題最多的部分，恰好是設計權被從烏松手中拿走、交給能力較差者的區域。
傅利夫伯格：成就地標，也留下一堂反面教材
丹麥規畫學者、建築教授本特·傅利夫伯格（Bent Flyvbjerg）2005年在《哈佛設計雜誌》（Harvard Design Magazine）寫道，雪梨港的殼狀屋頂讓澳洲站上世界地圖，影響之大無與倫比；但考量代價，也就是一位20世紀建築大師的職涯與作品遭到摧毀，雪梨提供的是「不該這樣做」的一課。
外形出自烏松的想像，結構由奧雅納把關
歌劇院的外觀輪廓出自烏松的想像力，由結構工程師奧維·阿勒普（Ove Arup，奧雅納）的專業實現，1973年啟用後立刻受到國際關注。設計極適合大眾媒體時代，是史上被拍攝次數最多的建築之一，2000年雪梨奧運的電視轉播中也頻繁出鏡。澳洲政府的雪梨旅遊網站稱歌劇院之於澳洲，如同金字塔之於埃及、競技場之於羅馬。
從船廠素描到阿爾托事務所：烏松的養成與足跡
烏松的父親是海軍工程師，少年時期他看著父親繪製遊艇設計圖。1942年畢業於哥本哈根皇家藝術學院（Royal Academy of Arts）後，他先後替瑞典建築師工作，包括貢納爾·阿斯普朗德（Gunnar Asplund），二戰後進入芬蘭大師阿爾瓦·阿爾托（Alvar Aalto）的事務所。1948年他獲獎學金前往摩洛哥，後來也造訪法蘭克·洛伊·萊特（Frank Lloyd Wright）位於亞利桑那的西塔里耶森（Taliesin West）。
1950年自立門戶，磚造自宅已有烏松的語彙
1950年，烏松在哥本哈根成立自己的事務所，1952年完成位於首都北方的自家住宅，用磚砌成，樸素甚至有些冷峻。住宅已出現他日後一再運用的設計語彙：把無裝飾的現代主義形式，與非洲、馬雅、美國西南部等古老在地建築的原始力量結合。
馬略卡島的自宅，在建築圈近乎神話
烏松與妻子莉絲（Lis）後來有大半時間住在西班牙外海的馬略卡島（Mallorca）。他在島上設計的兩棟住宅，據倫敦《建築評論》（Architectural Review）形容，「在建築師之間已近乎神話地位」。除了雪梨，他也在北歐留下幾件備受讚譽的公共建築，並設計1982年落成的科威特國民議會大廈（Kuwait National Assembly），但整體作品量相對少，以雪梨競圖替他帶來的聲勢而言，顯得更少。
在教條現代主義與表現主義之間搭起橋
與阿爾托、薩里寧、萊特一樣，烏松推動建築界擺脫「該承認多少歷史與前例」的教條式爭論，走向用新工程技術試驗更自由形式的年代。對教條派現代主義者而言，任何曲線、扭轉或無功能的裝飾，都是背離第一原則；烏松的職涯，則是通往法蘭克·蓋瑞（Frank Gehry）、聖地牙哥·卡拉特拉瓦（Santiago Calatrava）與札哈·哈蒂（Zaha Hadid）等表現主義當代建築師的橋梁。
2003年普利茲克建築獎：遲來的肯定
2003年，烏松獲頒建築界最高榮譽普利茲克建築獎（Pritzker Architecture Prize）。這個獎項頒給整體成就，而非單一建築，但外界普遍視之為對雪梨設計的遲來肯定。當年擔任評審的法蘭克·蓋瑞說，烏松完成的建築遠遠超前時代，也遠超當時可用的技術，他在極惡意的輿論與批評中堅持下來，蓋出改變整個國家形象的建築。
遠距修改內部：烏松廳與他最看重的肯定
對烏松而言，更有意義的肯定，是雪梨官方邀請他設計歌劇院內部的更新。他人在歐洲，靠建築照片與演出錄影遠距工作；俯瞰雪梨港的「烏松廳」（Utzon Room）於2004年10月正式啟用。烏松很少接受訪談或公開露面，當時以聲明表示，被這樣讚譽讓他感到最大的喜悅與滿足，甚至「勝過我可能得到或已經得到的任何獎章」。
Jorn Utzon dies at 90; Danish architect of Sydney Opera House
Reporting from Architecture Critic -- Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect whose eye-catching, nautically inspired design for the Sydney Opera House overcame a series of controversies surrounding its budget and acoustics to become one of the most recognizable landmarks of the 20th century, helping to usher in the current era of buildings beloved for their daring and photogenic forms, has died. He was 90.
Utzon died of a heart attack early Saturday morning while asleep at his home in Copenhagen, his son Kim Utzon told the Associated Press.
Few architects have been as closely associated with a single building as Utzon was with the 1973 opera house, which emerges -- part sailboat, part sea creature -- from a site on the edge of Sydney Harbor. In 1957, when he was just 38, he was named the surprise winner of an international competition for the project. His design for a cluster of five auditoriums tucked beneath a roof of billowing white concrete shells impressed a jury that included architect Eero Saarinen. It ultimately prevailed over 232 other entries.
In the end, though, Utzon's opera house commission proved to be the very definition of a mixed blessing, giving the architect years of heartache to go with broad newfound fame. In 1959, Joe Cahill, who as premier of New South Wales had been an early and influential champion of Utzon's design, died suddenly, and in the years that followed, controversy swirled around the proposed building. Utzon was criticized so heavily for cost overruns -- racking up a bill of more than $100 million, in Australian dollars, for a project budgeted at $7 million -- and construction delays that he resigned from the job and left Australia in disgust in 1966, seven years before the opera house was completed. Government-appointed architects finished the interior, making drastic changes to the layout of the theaters. Utzon never saw the final product in person and never returned to Australia.
Though he went on to design a handful of acclaimed public buildings in Northern Europe, along with the 1982 Kuwait National Assembly, Utzon's career output was relatively small, particularly given the boost his win in the opera house competition provided his fledgling practice.
For certain observers, the opera house was a cautionary tale about the risks of pursuing inventive architectural shape-making at the expense of function and budget. Davis Hughes, who served as director of public works for New South Wales during the height of the opera house controversy in the mid-1960s and was among the fiercest opponents of the design, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 2002: "You could say that he produced the shells. He was a sculptor. He was not an architect."
Utzon's supporters countered that the opera house budget was never realistic -- and in fact may have been strategically underestimated in an attempt to make it more likely to gain political approval -- and that the parts of the building that were most troubled were precisely those whose design had been taken away from the architect and handed to lesser talents. For them, Utzon was a visionary caught up in, and ultimately deeply wounded by, partisan squabbling that was only tangentially connected to architecture.
"The shells in Sydney Harbor have placed Australia on the global map like nothing else," Bent Flyvbjerg, a Danish planner and architecture professor, wrote in the Harvard Design Magazine in 2005. "But given the costs involved -- the destruction of the career and oeuvre of an undisputed master of 20th century architecture -- Sydney provides a lesson in what not to do."
Certainly there was no disputing that the opera house's distinctive exterior profile, which was entirely the product of Utzon's imagination and the expertise of the structural engineer Ove Arup, gained international attention as soon as the building opened in 1973. A design exquisitely suited for an age of mass media, it remains among the most photographed buildings ever constructed and was a ubiquitous screen presence during television coverage of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. A government website promoting tourism in Sydney accurately calls the opera house "as representative of Australia as the pyramids are of Egypt and the Colosseum of Rome."
With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that as the leading symbol for modern Australia the building was a bargain at nearly any price.
Jorn Utzon was born in Copenhagen on April 19, 1918. In his youth he watched his father, a naval engineer, sketch yacht designs. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Arts in Copenhagen in 1942, Utzon went to work for the Swedish architects Poul Hedquist and Gunnar Asplund and, after World War II, found a job with Finnish master Alvar Aalto.
Utzon traveled to Morocco in 1948 on a scholarship and later visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in Arizona.
Returning to Europe, he founded his own firm in Copenhagen in 1950. By 1952 he had completed a spare, somewhat forbidding brick house for his family north of the capital. It is marked by many of the design elements that would remain constants in his work, particularly an interest in combining the ornament-free forms of Modernist architecture with powerful, elemental references to African, Maya, Southwestern and other ancient vernacular designs.
Utzon and his wife, Lis, later spent much of their time on Mallorca, off the coast of Spain. The pair of houses Utzon designed there, according to London's Architectural Review, "have acquired almost mythic status among architects."
Like Aalto, Saarinen and Wright, Utzon helped push his profession away from dogmatic disputes about how much to acknowledge architectural history and precedent and toward an era of freer experimentation with the forms made possible by new engineering. His career provided a bridge between doctrinaire Modernists, for whom any curve, twist or functionless flourish was a betrayal of first principles, and expressionistic contemporary architects such as Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava and Zaha Hadid.
In 2003 Utzon was named the winner of the Pritzker Prize, architecture's top honor. Though the Pritzker is given for a body of work and not an individual building, the award was widely seen as belated recognition for the innovative Sydney design.
As Gehry, who served on the Pritzker jury that year, noted, "Utzon made a building well ahead of its time, far ahead of available technology, and he persevered through extraordinarily malicious publicity and negative criticism to build a building that changed the image of an entire country."
For Utzon, a more meaningful recognition came when officials in Sydney asked him to design updates to the interior of the opera house. He did so from Europe, working remotely and relying on photographs of the building and video recordings of performances on its stages. The opera house's Utzon Room, overlooking Sydney Harbor, was officially dedicated in October 2004.
"The fact that I'm mentioned in such a marvelous way, it gives me the greatest pleasure and satisfaction," Utzon, who rarely agreed to interviews or made public appearances in connection with his work, wrote in a statement at the time. "I don't think you can give me more joy as the architect. It supersedes any medal of any kind that I could get and have got."
Utzon is survived by his wife; sons Jan and Kim; daughter Lin; and several grandchildren. His sons are trained architects.