The Soaring Sails at the Sidney Opera House

The Soaring Sails at the Sidney Opera House, originally uploaded by miquel_martin.

This is not the most common angle, but you can probably recognize the Sidney Opera House! What you don't usually appreciate is that there's two main buildings: the Opera Center and the Concert Hall. The construction of the building was completely stuck until they could match the architect's vision to industrial plans: how would they manufacture the roofs? They finally found a fitting geometrical model, whereby the shells/sails are cutouts from hemispheres of the same radius. All in all the final budget was 1400% higher than expected but hey, this is an Australian icon,and it very well deserves it!

Si bé aquest no és l'angle més típic, segurament que reconeixeu el Palau de l'Opera de Sidney! El que no es sol veure es com l'estructura es composa de dos edificis principals: el Centre d'Opera i la Sala de Concerts. La construcció de l'edifici va estar totalment parada fins que es van empescar la manera d'aplicar tecniques industrials per la fabricacio del sostre a la visio de l'arquitecte. Finalment se'n van sortir amb un model geométric on les veles/closques son fragments d'hemisferis del mateix radi. Finalment, el cost de l'edifici va ser d'un 1400% per sobre del pressupost estimat, pero ep! la principal icona arquitectònica d'Australia bé s'ho mereix!

If you'd like some more info on this picture, there's a bunch of extra details in flickr.