The above title is the name of a New York Dolls song, which I thought I might be able to reference in something about the Sydney Opera House, but, when I thought about it, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Sydney Opera House and what I had recently learned about it. Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to use it one day for something else, if for no other reason than the fact that I love the song and I love the band.
Anyway, I learned that the original design for the opera house was the result of an international competition. As the story goes, there were three judges going through entries and they had narrowed it down to a few finalists. Then came Eero Saarinen, the famous architect who has now been immortalized in crossword puzzles for his odd four-lettered first name. Arriving late to Sydney, he saw the final entries and wasn’t crazy about any of them. So he started going through the trash. And there, among the rejected entries – and mind you, there were some 200 hundred entries – he landed on a little something by a Swede named Jorn Utzon which he thought was outstanding.
Several years later, the American architect, Louis Kahn, wrote that, “Light didn’t know how beautiful it was until it was reflected off this building.”
I’m thinking of getting a little photo of the Sydney Opera House for my office. It would be a reminder to think twice before killing an idea.
