SOH: Delivering new technologies

Tristram Carfare RDI
Arup
The design and construction of the Sydney Opera House is full of innovation. It was the first time that digital computers, then resident in university basements, were used in structural analysis, and later in the construction surveying.

The sails were made using repetitive match-cast concrete segments, clamped together by post-tensioned steel strands, with a thin layer of epoxy in between. This was the first time glued segmental construction was used, now commonplace in building big bridges.

The building is clad with precast concrete tile lids, the concrete cast directly on an upturned bed of Swedish ceramic tiles, then clipped into place on exquisitely detailed fixings that allow cladding and structure to move independently and provide a durable, beautiful, waterproof whole.

The sails were constructed by an on-site factory devised by the progressive builder Hornibrook, with pieces made at the South end of the site and then assembled in situ to the North using two rail mounted cranes that steadily retreated towards the harbour leaving the completed sails behind them. Fifty years later, we call this approach “modern methods of construction”.

The geometry of the glass walls, wonderfully resolved by Hall Todd & Littlemore, is much more complex than the sails themselves. After thorough research, these massive, top hung walls are built using laminated glass (safety glass), used for the first time in a building.

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Tristram Carfrae is one of Arup’s Deputy Chairs and an Arup Fellow. He chairs our Digital Executive and sponsors our strategy for being excellent in all that we do. A structural engineer by practice, he has contributed to many award-winning buildings, including the Water Cube for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. He currently leads Arup’s team helping complete Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona using digital fabrication and modern methods of construction.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, was appointed a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) in 2006, and received the Institution of Structural Engineers' Gold Medal in 2014 and IABSE's International Award of Merit in Structural Engineering in 2018.