Envisioning the ‘Sydney National Opera House’: A different ‘Red Book’

Jørn Utzon’s Sydney National Opera House volume featuring an early version of his award-winning design, and known as the ‘Red Book’ due to the colour of its cover, was printed by Atelier Elektra of Copenhagen, Denmark, in March 1958. A variant of the ‘Red Book’ – with additional plans dated May 1958 – has recently been generously donated to Museums of History NSW by Mr Mark Matheson.

The State Archives Collection holds an earlier version of the ‘Red Book’ dated March 1958 as NRS-12707-1-[SZ107], comprising 58 pages.

The later variant

The May 1958 ‘Red Book’ (NRS-12707-2) differs as it shows early changes made to elements of the original design and includes additional plans that are not present in the earlier volume. The annotations and additional plans illustrate that there were proposed changes to the direction of the Sydney Opera House structure before any building work even took place.

Jørn Utzon had presented the earlier ‘Red Book’ to Premier J J Cahill on 26 March 1958. There were only 25 copies of it in Sydney at that time. It appears the clients had time to study the plans before meeting with Utzon and engineer Ove Arup on 9 April 1958 at the rooms of Professor Henry Ingham Ashworth (one of the original judges of the Sydney Opera House Competition) at the School of Architecture at the University of Sydney. The clients were Charles Moses, General Manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission; Hugh Hunt, Executive Director of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust; and John Rankin, the Sydney City Building Surveyor. They immediately demanded changes such as increasing the capacity of the concert hall. Utzon was so confident that these changes could be accomplished that they were announced in The Sydney Morning Herald three days later, on 12 April.

While the earlier ‘Red Book’ was printed in Denmark, Utzon’s modifications were printed by the NSW Government Printing Office in Ultimo in the following weeks and dated May 1958. The extra, amended pages are interleaved with the original ‘redundant’ pages, which were crossed through.

We are grateful that this rare item can now join the significant body of material relating to the Sydney Opera House already held in the State Archives Collection.