SYDNEY, Australia — The distinctive white sails of the Sydney Opera House darkened Sunday night to mourn the death of Joern Utzon, the creative mind behind the globally known landmark.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd led praise for the Dane: “Joern Utzon was a visionary architect.”
Utzon died from a heart attack in his sleep early Saturday in Denmark, said his son, Kim Utzon. He was 90.
Utzon’s design for the opera house was selected in 1957 after a worldwide competition, but he was pushed off the project after years of cost overruns and wrangling with the state government. He left Australia before the building was completed and never returned.
Utzon, who in recent years had suffered from a degenerative eye condition that made him virtually blind, declined invitations to return to Australia, citing high blood pressure. Still, he said he wasn’t bitter about the dispute over the Sydney landmark.
“It’s part of education — I can’t be bitter about anything in life,” Utzon told AP in 1998.
Born April 9, 1918, in Copenhagen, Utzon graduated from the city’s Academy of Arts in 1942. He established his own architectural office in Copenhagen in 1950.
Utzon’s earliest buildings were private homes. It came as a surprise to many when he won the competition for the Sydney Opera House in 1956. Utzon received the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2003 for his design. The jury singled it out as among the most iconic buildings of the 20th century, saying it “proves that the marvelous and seemingly impossible in architecture can be achieved.”
Utzon also designed the National Assembly building in Kuwait City.
