The history of the design decisions directly related to
the construction of the Sydney Opera House remains
largely anecdotal. A rich group of items recently discovered in Australia may now start filling this gap, as documents brought to light include the drawings issued by
the general contractor to build the concrete formwork
for the shells, drawings of the temporary structures and
falsework, site images, and contractor’s notes. All in all,
the drawings display sophisticated combinatory solutions for attaining the structural form required whilst
introducing repetition and flexibility in the making of the
discrete pieces. While suggesting a remarkable combination of manufacturing and structural shrewdness, these
blueprints call into question the canonical history of the
building roof’s famous “sails” and the rhetoric of the
“spherical solution” used to arrive at them