The Sydney Opera House has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, bringing back memories of the much dramatized, colorful past that led to its completion.
The multipurpose performance arts center at Sydney Harbour is an iconic structure featuring a shell-shaped roof. As a tourist destination at the scenic Bennelong Point, it attracts over 10 million visitors a year. But it's not just that — it's also a symbol of innovation and creativity, as well as a source of immense pride for many Australians.
A lesser-known fact is that a Japanese architect was heavily involved in the creation of this masterpiece, which was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2007. From 1958 to 1961, Yuzo Mikami (1931-2020) worked closely with Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect who came up with the structure’s design, in a studio nestled in a beech forest in Denmark.
Then, for more than five years in the 1960s, Mikami worked in the London office of structural engineer Ove Arup, joining a team tasked with bringing Utzon’s ingenious ideas closer to reality. But despite this, Mikami has remained a relatively unknown figure in the world of architecture, even though, upon his return to Japan in 1968, he went on to design several large-scale structures, including Orchard Hall in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward.
Now, 50 years after the completion of a monument that symbolizes Australia, people with memories and knowledge of Mikami say recognition of his achievements is long-overdue.
A decade in Europe
Born in Tokyo and majoring in architecture at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (now the Tokyo University of the Arts), Mikami became involved in designing the Opera House through Kunio Maekawa, a famed architect he worked for after graduation. Maekawa was in charge of designing the Japan pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Expo.
Utzon, who had won an international competition to design the Opera House the year before, saw the pavilion and asked Maekawa to send an architect to work with him.
Mikami details the productive and fun-filled days he spent with Utzon and a small team of talented architects in his 2001 book, “Utzon’s Sphere: Sydney Opera House — How It Was Designed and Built.” The book, which was published by Shokokusha and has been translated into English, features many of his Opera House design drawings and offers the reader firsthand insight into the creative struggles of the Danish genius and his team.
One of Mikami’s earlier tasks was to design a plaque to commemorate the start of the construction. Asked by Utzon to come up with something unique, he proposed that a round plaque, rather than a conventional rectangle, be placed at a point where the center lines of the roofs of the two halls merge when they are extended toward the edge of the concourse. He likened the plaque to the navel of a human body. Utzon immediately liked and adopted the idea, according to Mikami's book.
Even today, the bronze plaque, which has a diameter of 61 centimeters, can be found at the bottom of the steps leading to the two halls.
Then in 1960, Mikami, while still being employed by Utzon, was invited by Ove Arup to work at his London office as his architectural assistant. He immediately made up his mind to transfer, because he had been interested in designs that had “structural rationality,” and also because Arup agreed to sponsor a labor permit, which was very difficult for a Japanese person to get back then, according to an unpublished manuscript of his autobiography kept by Mikami’s family.
“Despite being a great engineer and the head of a huge design organization, and having myriad tasks to perform, he also respects the individuality and lives of the people who work for him and tries to treat them as equal human beings,” Mikami wrote about Arup.
Mikami joined Arup’s office in 1962, after working independently for about a year while based in Munich. It was also around this time he married Karin, a German pianist, whom he had met a few years earlier and “fell in love with at first sight,” according to Tokyo-based architect Erika Mikami, the 56-year-old daughter of Mikami. The two also shared a love of music, she said.
At Ove Arup & Partners, he was heavily involved in the detailed design of the Opera House’s shell roof, a key feature that gives the structure its unique look, as well as that of the tiles fixed to the roof.
Utzon's competition entry featured a shell-shaped roof, but it was free form so it could not be built as it was. To build it, the roof had to follow a geometric pattern, so the parts could be produced with precision. After three years of intensive research, Utzon had an “epiphany,” coming up with the so-called spherical solution, in which each of the shell shapes would be taken out of a sphere.
Michael Moy, the author of “Sydney Opera House — Idea to Icon” and a full-page obituary for Mikami in the Sydney Morning Herald following his death in 2020, said Mikami brought a unique perspective to the project as the only architect who had worked with both Utzon and Arup.
“I imagine that having Yuzo as an employee was an advantage to Arup because of Yuzo's early work with Utzon,” Moy said. “Who at Arup would know how Utzon thought better than Yuzo did? Of course, Arup knew Utzon quite well too, but that relationship lacked the intimacy of the design team's early days.”
Mikami was also a trailblazer in the sense that he carved out a career in Europe when most people in Japan were not even allowed to travel overseas. It was only in 1964 when Japan lifted its restrictions on overseas trips.
“We now live in a globalized world, and many people study abroad,” said Nobuhisa Motooka, a professor of architecture at Ochanomizu University who has studied Mikami's work. “But back then, Mikami was unique among Japan’s architects as someone who worked in Europe and played an important role.”
Mikami himself was proud of having worked for two giants who made the Opera House a reality.
“No one questions Utzon's originality and natural talent in designing the Sydney Opera House,” Mikami wrote in the manuscript. “At the same time, however, Arup's extremely high skills and superhuman cooperation for Utzon made the beautiful dream of the competition proposal a reality at Bennelong Point. Utzon can never be too grateful to Arup.
“By a strange twist of fate, I was able to participate in this unique design work from the perspective of both the offices of Utzon and Arup. No one else has had such an experience.”
Convertible hall concept
Mikami returned to Tokyo in 1968, two years after Utzon resigned from the project due to political pressures over time and cost concerns. The state government of New South Wales commissioned three Australians, including a young architect named Peter Hall, to complete the project. Mikami recalls in his book that he “felt sorry” for Hall, whom he had met in 1959 when the latter visited Utzon’s office in Denmark, showing him around.
“Somebody said it’s like telling three people to complete an unfinished Rembrandt painting,” Mikami wrote in his book. “It couldn't be more true.”
Mikami was unhappy with Utzon's resignation and the cancellation of the “convertible hall” concept, which Utzon had initially proposed for the Opera House’s main hall before giving up on it halfway through.
Convertible halls are designed to accommodate events with acoustically different requirements by allowing for the moving of interior ceilings and walls, thereby ensuring the optimal reverberation time for each performance (1.9 seconds for symphony concerts and 1.6 seconds for opera, for example). The acoustics also depend on what kind of materials the interior structures are made from, such as wood or concrete, as well as the amount of air around each audience seat (Mikami writes that the reverberation time increases with the amount of air available, meaning each audience seat needs about 10 cubic meters of air to get a reverberation time of two seconds).
Mikami was personally convinced that a convertible hall was technically possible, but the Australian team proposed to make the major hall a venue only for concerts, while making the second, smaller hall a venue for opera. According to his book, Mikami was greatly disappointed by this change of plans and tried to convince Hall to stick to Utzon’s original idea of a convertible major hall that could be used both for opera and symphony concerts — but to no avail.
After he came back to Tokyo in 1968, he established his own office MIDI Architects in 1973 and was commissioned to design the 2,150-seat Orchard Hall in 1984. There, Mikami achieved his long-held dream of creating a truly convertible hall.
Masaki Ogawa, an architect in Tokyo who used to work at Mikami's office, says Mikami was extremely strict with his staff but trained him thoroughly to “design by ear.”
For Orchard Hall, Mikami designed three huge acoustic shelters driven by electric motors. The shelters are nested, with one fitting inside the other, at the back of the stage. They are also on wheels and can be moved to a position suitable for each performance, whether that be a symphony concert, chamber music performance, opera or a popular music concert.
“Each of the shelters weighs about 40 tons, almost as heavy as a motored train car,” said Ogawa, who worked on the Orchard Hall design under Mikami. “The walls are very sturdy, so it is almost like a moving architecture.”
While many concert halls around the nation were equipped with acoustic reflecting boards near the ceiling to adjust the reverberation time, Mikami thought such equipment was insufficient to achieve the best acoustics, Ogawa said.
“In Mikami’s mind, the world now had the convertible hall envisioned by Utzon: not at Bennelong Point but in the Shibuya district of Tokyo,” Moy wrote in his Mikami obituary.
Opened in 1989, Orchard Hall has undergone repairs but remains largely the same as when it was built. Tokyu Group, which runs the performance arts venue, told Mikami and Ogawa that it would keep the hall unchanged “forever,” Ogawa said, noting that the two were deeply moved by the major developer's stance.
Orchard Hall is the only facility that will remain intact in the Bunkamura cultural complex in Shibuya — the rest of the premises, which includes a cinema, a museum and a drama theater, was shut down in April as part of the district's long-term redevelopment plan.
To shed light on Mikami's work, Ogawa, together with Erika Mikami and two scholars, are working to publish a book, drawing on a pile of records, drawings and notes left by the late architect.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sydney’s landmark, Ogawa says he wants people to remember the energy of those who designed and built the masterpiece.
“The Opera House embodies the passion of designers, structural engineers and builders who earnestly cooperated to create architecture,” Ogawa said.
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