Nature as a Source of Inspiration for the Structure of the Sydney Opera House

Abstract

Architects throughout the ages have looked to nature for answers to complex questions about the most appropriate structural forms for their buildings. This is the case of Jørn Utzon and the design of roof shells of the Sydney Opera House, in which the search for natural references was constant, from the nautical references in the initial design phases to the final spherical solution based on the analogy with an orange. This paper analyzes the influence of nature as a source of inspiration in this World Heritage building, assessing through FEM calculation models the suitability of the different solutions proposed and weighing up the influence of certain factors such as scale in this type of process. Through the calculation models developed, it has been possible to verify the poor performance of the initial designs compared to the power of the final solution, which, after more than 5 years of research by the design team headed by Utzon, was able to solve the enormous problem with a “simple” typological and geometric change.

Amphibious Architecture: A Biomimetic Design Approach to Flood Resilience

“…Architects, engineers, and designers have often looked to nature for inspiration in their designs [13]. Nature serves as a good source of inspiration because form, function, and structure in biological systems are well-integrated, owing to constant evolution over billions of years [12,14]. Many strategies exist for the application of biomimetics in building and load-bearing structure design in general.…”

“…There have been many designs for amphibious buildings, as well as several bioinspired buildings [17]. Details on the development of most bio-inspired building designs are available in the literature, including the process of abstraction of relevant characteristics from nature and transfer into design [14,18]. On the other hand, the details of the design development of amphibious buildings are not readily available.…”