Category Archives: Twentieth-century architecture

Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral (Gibberd version)

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Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool

When I take groups to Liverpool, I love to lead them from one cathedral to the other, usually from the Anglican Cathedral, which has pointed arches and a vista towards a distant high altar, to the spectacular circular space of the uncompromisingly modern Catholic Cathedral.

The Metropolitan Cathedral, as it is properly known, was initiated in 1960 when Archibishop (later Cardinal) John Heenan decided a cathedral had to be built, and quickly, on the Brownlow Hill land that had been a building site since the 1930s.

His brief, in the years before the Second Vatican Council, was to have a building that would give a congregation of two thousand an uninterrupted view of the high altar, would cost no more than a million pounds, and could be built within five years.

The competition winner was Sir Frederick Gibberd, who engineered a circular space, with a corona supported by ring beams held in place by sixteen angled pillars and diagonal concrete buttresses.

Within each bay of this structure he placed a variety of free-standing chapels, most of which were initially left plain for future generations to embellish.  The echoing space of the interior is lit by John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens’ deeply coloured glass.

The Metropolitan Cathedral was consecrated in 1967 – completed on time and within budget.

Like so much 1960s architecture, the haste to complete meant that new, untried materials were used which did not stand the test of time.  Within a generation, the leaking roof had to be reinstated and much of the cladding replaced.  The processional approach that Gibberd intended was only constructed at the start of this century.

Nevertheless, the spiky profile of the Metropolitan Cathedral has integrated into the Liverpool skyline with a much lighter touch than Lutyens’ bombastic basilica ever could.

It’s ironic that the architect of the Anglican Cathedral, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, was a Catholic;  Sir Frederick Gibberd, architect of the Catholic Cathedral, was in fact a Methodist.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Liverpool’s Catholic Cathedral (Lutyens version)

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Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool: Lutyens crypt (foreground); Gibberd cathedral (background)

Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool: Lutyens crypt (foreground); Gibberd cathedral (background)

When Liverpool’s Catholic community returned to the task of erecting a cathedral in 1930 under Archbishop Richard Downey using the site of the former Brownlow Hill Workhouse, they planned a church to dominate the cityscape even more than E W Pugin’s elegant Gothic design of 1853 at Everton would have done.

Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) designed a monster basilica in what he called his “Wrenaissance” style.  Nearly as long, yet wider and higher than St Peter’s in Rome, its dome would have been half as tall again as the tower of the Anglican Cathedral, and significantly larger than the domes of St Peter’s or London’s St Paul’s.  The Victoria Tower of Liverpool University, across the road on Brownlow Hill, would have fitted inside the entrance arch.

A vast architectural model, seventeen feet long and over eleven feet high, was built as an aid to fund-raising:  it has survived and is displayed in the Museum of Liverpool at the Pier Head:  [http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/conservation/departments/models/lutyens]

Lutyens cheerfully declared that the actual cathedral would take four hundred years to build.  The foundation stone was laid in 1933 and the first mass said in the crypt in 1937.  At the time of the 1941 Blitz, the sole remaining mason was obliged to down tools and work stopped entirely.  The crypt, which had already consumed four million blue bricks, was partly adapted as an air-raid shelter, and otherwise left open to the weather.

After the war, a reduced version of Lutyens’ design was commissioned from Adrian Gilbert Scott, brother of the architect of the Anglican Cathedral, but dismissed as unworkable.  The incomplete crypt was put to use for worship and as a parish centre.

What was built of Lutyens’ cathedral is an awesome space which hints at the scale of the unbuilt structure.  Within, under what would have been the high altar, the tombs of some of the early archbishops are contained in a vault guarded by a seven-ton marble rolling stone, representing Christ’s tomb in Gethsemane.

I once saw the rolling stone roll.  It’s operated by the sort of winch that’s still sometimes used for the house-tabs in school assembly halls.  The sound of seven tons of marble rolling into a doorway is like nothing else.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Modern architects in Liverpool

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Unity Building, Liverpool

Unity Building, Liverpool

It’s a sign of the times that the guide to the twenty-first century buildings in the city centre of Liverpool, is already in its second edition. The New Liverpool:  modern architecture for a modern city in fact includes buildings back into the 1990s.

Andrew F Robinson’s survey lists and describes Liverpool’s new buildings in five well-mapped itineraries around the city-centre, and occasionally indicates what is proposed for currently empty sites.  His list shows how prolific are such architectural practices as Falconer Chester Hall [http://www.fcharchitects.com].  He also nods to the buildings lost to these new developments and, in some cases refers to structures conserved, retained as façades or rebuilt in replica.

He provides the sort of informal insights that don’t crop up in volumes of the Pevsner series – which architect designed his mother’s name in Morse code into a building (Paul Monaghan at the Unity Building, 2007), which building was topped out by its occupant and the architect wearing pink hard hats (Herbert’s ‘Bling’ Building, 2006) and which architect omitted to provide waste disposal in an apartment block (no names, see page 9…).

Sometimes he’s obliged to note “architect and builder unknown”, a recognition that information about new buildings isn’t easy to come by.  Newly-built buildings don’t always show up on the internet or, indeed, in Liverpool’s excellent local studies library.  In one case, Andrew Robinson reports that a builder flatly refused to disclose details for publication (no names, see page 27…).

The New Liverpool fills a gap between publications of record, such as the Pevsner volumes, and the current architectural press, which is aimed primarily at professionals, so that people who are simply interested in buildings and those who live in and with developing cities can identify who designed what and why in their community.

The New Liverpool:  modern architecture for a modern city is obtainable from West Derby Publishing, 279 Eaton Road, West Derby, Liverpool, L12 2AG for £3.00.  [ISBN 978 1 871075 09 0].

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Younger architect in Liverpool

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Liverpool Cathedral

Liverpool Cathedral

The achievement of Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, winning two competitions to design what became St George’s Hall, Liverpool, between the ages of 25 and 27, is remarkable;  even more surprising was the result of the competition to build Liverpool Cathedral fifty years later.

1880s plans to build an Anglican cathedral on the St John’s site, backing on to St George’s Hall, came to nothing:  no-one could find a way of building a church that would sit comfortably alongside Elmes & Cockerill’s great classical temple.

The eventual site, St James’ Mount, was chosen and the customary architectural competition organised, with a controversial stipulation that Gothic designs would be preferred.

When the 103 anonymous entries were assessed, the judges were disconcerted to discover that the winner was the 21-year-old Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of the great Gothic Revival architect, George Gilbert Scott, who had designed, amid much else, the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.  To add to their discomfort, Giles Scott was a Roman Catholic.

The committee asked him if he’d designed anything before.  Yes, he said, a pipe-rack for his sister.  In the end, Scott was given the commission, as was his right, but under the supervision of one of the assessors, the veteran Gothic Revival architect, George Frederick Bodley.

Bodley’s influence is apparent in the florid decoration of the first section of Scott’s cathedral, the Lady Chapel, begun in 1904.  It was an uncomfortable arrangement:  Giles Scott’s resignation was ready to post when he heard the news of Bodley’s death in 1907.

By the time the Lady Chapel was consecrated in 1910, Scott went to the building committee and calmly proposed a radical redesign.  Instead of twin towers, he wanted a single tower above a majestic central space.  This was not straightforward, for the foundations of the two towers were already in place, which is why the cathedral as built has twin transepts and twin central porches, one of which stares vacantly over the chasm of St James’ Cemetery.

The 331-foot Vestey Tower, named after the Dewhurst butchers’ dynasty that paid for it, contains the highest and heaviest ringing peal of bells in the world.  The central space below could accommodate Nelson’s Column if Nelson took his hat off.  The tower was completed in 1941, in the darkest days of the Second World War.  “Keep going, whatever you do, even if you can only go on in a small way,” King George VI advised on a wartime visit.

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott died in 1960, his final contribution the Nave Bridge which frames the vista towards the High Altar.  The west end was eventually finished, to modified designs by his professional partner, Frederick Thomas in collaboration with Roger Pinckney, and dedicated in the presence of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1978.

Sir Giles and Lady Scott’s remains lie before the west door of the completed cathedral.  The Winter 2010-11 edition of C20 – the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society mentioned that the stone marker of [their] grave has been removed and that they rest “in an unmarked grave as cars and delivery vans to the café and shop frequently drive over [them]”.

That may be true, but it can’t be right.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Survivals & Revivals:  past views of English architecture, please click here.

All sorts of stories about Beulah Road

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Hillsborough Leisure Centre, Beulah Road, Sheffield

Hillsborough Leisure Centre, Beulah Road, Sheffield

I will always have a particular regard for the Hillsborough Leisure Centre, the third and smallest of Sheffield’s World Student Games sports facilities, because members of its staff saved my life when I had a cardiac arrest in the gym.  It’s because of Mel who pressed the panic button, Ryan who ran for the defibrillator and John who kick-started me to excellent effect that I’m here to write this.

Until the Centre was built in 1991, Beulah Road was lined with typical Sheffield artisan terraced houses, which before they were demolished figured as a location in the gloomy, award-winning Barry Hines/Mick Jackson TV film, Threads (1984).  My mate Phil’s uncles lived here, and there are glorious family tales of their fanatical devotion to Sheffield Wednesday FC.  One of the uncles apparently threw himself in the River Don once when his team lost.  The river is at least a foot deep at this point.

Sheffield Wednesday is so-called because it was originally a butchers’ side, and they played on early-closing day which was, in the late-nineteenth century, Wednesday.  Though the ground is officially called Hillsborough, it more or less stands in Owlerton, which is why the team are called the Owls, and devoted fans go to considerable lengths to acquire car-registrations ending in OWL.

(Sheffield United’s colours are red and white, apparently because of the red headscarves of the formidable buffer girls who polished the blades of Sheffield-made cutlery, which is probably why their team is known as the Blades.)

But the Beulah Road landmark that means most in Sheffield’s history and popular culture is the factory of George Bassett & Co, whose salesman accidentally tipped his display box of liquorice sweets all over a customer’s shop counter, and before he could replace them neatly in their compartments was offered an order for them as they were – “all sorts”.

 

Inconvenient city

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Manchester Town Hall Extension (left) & Central Library (right)

Manchester Town Hall Extension (left) & Central Library (right)

The city of Manchester now boasts only one public convenience for its population of nearly half a million.

Visitors must follow Queen Mary’s precept, never to miss an opportunity to take the weight from one’s feet or to relieve oneself.

In the basement of a branch of the food-chain Eat, at the corner of Cross Street and King Street, I visited one of the most peculiar gents’ lavatories I’ve ever encountered – one of those hand-driers that burst into action as soon as you walk through the door, mirrors on all four walls (very distracting for a gentleman), no sign of the stairs you came down when you come out, and instead another staircase that disappears into the ceiling.  It’s worth visiting for the sheer drama:  http://www.118.com/restaurant/1883714.mvc/manchester-restaurants-eat.

Later, I found the one loo that will remain open, located at the back of the Town Hall Extension, the deft 1938 design of Vincent Harris, the architect who was commissioned to create a building that could stand between Alfred Waterhouse’s great Town Hall of 1877 and his own Central Library of 1934.

The Town Hall is one of the great Gothic buildings of the Victorian period, built in Yorkshire sandstone on an odd trapezoid-shaped site;  Harris’ circular Central Library is grand-slam classical, built in white Portland limestone.  Two more different public buildings could hardly be imagined, and it’s ironic that Vincent Harris landed the job of uniting them with an office building on the site between.

This he did with consummate skill – devising a tall, steeply-gabled building which echoes the Town Hall, but with plain surfaces and regular lines, aligned to the Town Hall and embracing the circumference of the Central Library.  Though not universally accepted when first completed, time has shown that Harris’ group forms a far more inspired and respectful piece of civic planning than most twentieth-century public architecture.

Who would have thought in 1938 that this monument to twentieth-century civic pride would become the only official place in Manchester to “spend a penny” – a landmark of the poverty of local government in the twenty-first century?

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Manchester’s Heritage, please click here.

The 60-page, A4 handbook for the 2019 ‘Manchester’s Heritage’ tour, with text, photographs, maps and a reading list, is available for purchase, price £15.00 including postage and packing.  To order a copy, please click here or, if you prefer, send a cheque, payable to Mike Higginbottom, to 63 Vivian Road, Sheffield, S5 6WJ.

Lutyens in Yorkshire

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Heathcote, Ilkley, North Yorkshire

Heathcote, Ilkley, North Yorkshire

A short distance outside Ilkley town-centre is Heathcote, a dignified, over-scaled villa designed by Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) and constructed 1905-7, which is hugely significant as Lutyens’ first design in the classical style he called “Wrenaissance”, which led directly to such great works as New Delhi and the unbuilt Liverpool Catholic Cathedral.

Lutyens was appalled by the location:  “…an ultra suburban locality over which villas of dreadful kind and many colours wantonly distribute themselves – a pot pourri of Yorkeological details” and he was privately dismissive of his client, a wool merchant called John Thomas Hemmingway.  Lutyens declared that his client hadn’t an ‘h’ to his name, and said that he “could not spend his money – until he met me”.  He was scathing about Mrs Hemmingway – “…does nothing all day and takes turns with the cook to go out…”, the daughter – “…photographs [of her] posing as a professional beauty, but when you see her she is shrimpish – about 4 foot high, full of self-confidence – adored by her admiring parents and her charm takes the form of giggles”, and the son:  “…overnosed and very young and shy…No initiative.  He works hard but…spends no money…”

Quite how Hemmingway came across Lutyens and chose to commission him is unclear.  Lutyens, then an ambitious young architect with a reputation for charm, showed his inner steel by his choice of style and materials:  he later told his colleague, Herbert Baker, “To get domination I had to get a scale greater than the height of my rooms allowed, so unconsciously the San Michele invention repeated itself.  That time-worn Doric order – a lovely thing – I have the cheek to adopt.  You can’t copy it.  To be right you have to take it and design it…”

The result is a massive building of dour Guiseley stone – “a stone without a soul to call its own, as sober as a teetotaller” – with grey Morley stone dressings, lightened by the adventurous use of red pantiles rather than Yorkshire slate on the hipped roofs.  The entrance vestibule is a magnificent space, paved in white marble which is inset – as a nod to the local vernacular – with herringbone brick waxed till it shone.

Heathcote cost J T Hemmingway £17,500, and he didn’t get what he wanted.  Certainly, a demand for storage space gave him exquisite china cupboards with arched glazed doors and teardrop glazing bars;  similarly, in the morning room the built-in bookshelves either side of the fireplace incorporate drop-plan writing desks.

However, one of Lutyens’ assistants, John Brandon Jones, told how on a site-visit Lutyens and Hemmingway viewed the space intended for the black marble staircase.  Hemmingway said, “I don’t want a black marble staircase.  I want an oak staircase”, to which Lutyens replied, “What a pity.”  On a later visit, when Hemmingway was shown the completed black marble staircase, he complained, “I told you I didn’t want a black marble staircase.”  “I know,” the architect replied, “and I said ‘What a pity’, didn’t I?”

Christopher Hussey, Lutyens’ official biographer, commented that this was “the outstanding example of a client thus getting the exact opposite of what he originally wanted, down to the smallest detail, and becoming immensely proud of it”.

 

Adelphi adventures

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Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool

Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool

Liverpool’s Adelphi Hotel rather missed the boat when it was built before and after the First World War.

It was conceived by the Midland Railway Company as a companion to the Midland Hotel in Manchester, (designed by Charles Trubshaw, 1898-1904).

The Adelphi, built on a site that had been a hotel since 1828, was designed by Frank Atkinson, on a scale made possible because its Portland stone façades conceal a steel framework.  The two major spaces within, the Central Court and the Hypostyle Hall, provide grand interiors which lead to ancillary restaurants and meeting rooms.  A planned ballroom block beyond the Fountain Court at the east of the building was never built.

Ironically the opening of this magnificent hotel, its design and operation strongly influenced by the manager Arthur Towle’s tours of European and American hotel-practice, coincided with the shift of the major transatlantic steamship lines to Southampton.  It was the very last city-centre railway hotel to be built in Britain.

When British Transport Hotels was privatised in 1984 the Adelphi was sold to Britannia Hotels, who rescued it from a state of decay in which the top two floors had been closed off and given over to the pigeons.  Britannia’s restoration included converting the upper floors to modern bedrooms and building a rear extension to increase further the capacity to a total of 402 rooms.

Staying at the Adelphi is often an adventure.  In times gone by I ran university extramural study tours from the Adelphi.  On one occasion the maitre d’ let my group into the restaurant on the first night before I’d had a chance to register them:  it proved remarkably difficult to single out my two dozen extramural students, most of them of a certain age, from the two hundred line-dancers who were also there for the weekend.

The last time I stayed at the Adelphi was for one of Ken Roe’s inimitable Cinema Theatre Society weekends.  I’d been attracted by the opportunity to see On Golden Pond on the big screen at the Philharmonic Hall, but the entertainment highlight of the weekend was having breakfast with a gent who turned out to be an admiral.  (He was curious to know what part of the ship I’d served on, and had to be disabused of the idea I was there for a naval reunion.  On the contrary, I said, I was there to visit the bingo halls of Bootle.)

The admiral told excellent stories, including one of greeting the Queen Mother in a cloudburst, drenching her as he bowed forward, tipping out the puddle that had accumulated in his cap.  He also explained how to solve the problem of spring-cleaning the bridge of a nuclear submarine when no-one below petty-officer status is allowed in. But that’s a state secret, such as you might, if you’re lucky, hear whispered over breakfast at the Adelphi Hotel.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Watching the boats go by

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Museum of Liverpool & Mersey Ferry terminal, Pier Head, Liverpool

Museum of Liverpool & Mersey Ferry terminal, Pier Head, Liverpool

Pier Head is the starting-point for the “ferry across the Mersey” and was, in times gone by, the terminus for most Liverpool trams, which gyrated round a series of loops like a Hornby train-set, and latterly for the bus services that replaced them.

The area was, until the late nineteenth century, St George’s Dock, which was filled in to provide a transport interchange between the trams and the ferries, and to provide sites for three statement buildings that asserted Liverpool’s grandeur to river passengers.

It became an often bleak plaza, across which ferry passengers tramped to a functional ferry building, above which was a Chinese restaurant, the Shanghai Palace, with quite the best views of ships and ferries moving about the river, overshadowed on the landward side by the bulk of the “Three Graces”, from north to south the Royal Liver Building (1908-10), the Cunard Building (1913-20) and the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board Offices (1903-7).

In January 2006 the floating pier of the ferry terminal ignominiously sank:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2006/03/03/landingstage_feature.shtml.

Now, in the wake of the Capital of Culture excitements, Pier Head has been transformed.

The ferry building has been replaced by a very grand, modern structure with a display-area, a shop of Beatles memorabilia and an oriental restaurant.  Designed by the Belfast-based Hamilton Architects, it has divided opinion [http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/beauty-or-beast-new-liverpool-pier-head-ferry-terminal/5204487.article, http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/gallery/landingstage] and received the unequivocal accolade of the Carbuncle Cup 2009 [http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2009/08/28/10-5m-liverpool-ferry-terminal-named-the-uk-s-worst-new-building-by-architects-magazine-100252-24551575].

At the southern end, at Mann Island, once a notoriously rough area of taverns between two further now-vanished docks, Manchester Dock and Chester Basin, stands the new Museum of Liverpool, designed by the Danish practice 3XN and the Manchester architects AEW and due to open in early 2011.  [For descriptions and discussion see http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/museum-of-liverpool-by-3xn-and-aew-architects/1994293.article and http://www.building.co.uk/a-lens-on-3xn%E2%80%99s-new-museum-of-liverpool/3125091.article (both of which require registration).]

The most startling innovation of all is the Leeds & Liverpool Canal Link, which gives narrow boats access to the Albert Dock for the first time.  Originally, the canal terminated at Stanley Dock in the midst of the north docks:  this link, running in a cutting in front of the Three Graces and tunnelling under the new Museum, is illustrated at http://www.penninewaterways.co.uk/ll/ll85.htm.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on Liverpool architecture, please click here.

Exploring Australia 15: Sydney Opera House

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Opera House, Sydney

Opera House, Sydney

The one building in Sydney that can’t be missed is, of course, the Opera House, the youngest of all World Heritage Sites and a world-class icon.  The whole building is a magnificent piece of sculpture, and it houses two astonishing auditoria.  It provides Sydney with a cultural feast all the year round:  on the day I visited I would cheerfully have booked for three of the five productions on offer.  Sydney people tell me that it has a curious quality of drawing people in to performances, and then releasing them at the interval into the stunning setting of the harbour in a way that no other theatre or concert hall in the world can possibly do.

Its story is remarkable.  Planned by the conductor Eugene Goossens, on a location that had previously been of all things a tram-depot, the architectural competition was controversially won by the Danish architect, Jørn Utzon, whose sketchy but inspired design was pulled out of the reject pile by a Finnish judge who recognised its potential.  The penalty of choosing an inspired design based on imprecise drawings was that work started on the foundations before anyone had any idea how to build the superstructure.  Even the great engineer, Ove Arup, eventually despaired, until Jørn Utzon spotted a simple way to conceive and construct the unique geometry of the shapes which people generally refer to as “sails”, though to me they look more like shells.  By the time the exterior was completed far behind schedule, with no final specification for the interior and a monumental budget over-run, the New South Wales government lost patience with Jørn Utzon, who resigned.

Once the Opera House was opened in 1973 it was quickly recognised as one of the great, arguably the greatest of modernist buildings of the twentieth century.  At the end of his life, showered with honours, Jørn Utzon was re-employed to update his building, which is today overseen by his son, Jan Utzon.  Jørn Utzon never set foot in Sydney after his resignation, and never saw the completed building except in images.

For all these reasons, and the sheer pleasure of the place, anyone who loves buildings, theatre, music and art really must see the Opera House if they’re in Sydney.

That said, I was disappointed by the building tour I went on.  My heart sinks when a guide hands out headsets:  I know that I’m going to be subjected to ambient noise, the sound of doors being unlocked, mutterings and individual, irrelevant conversations.  This particular guide had a habit also of switching off her microphone (to give her voice a rest, she said) and then walking off talking.  She also took us into an undistinguished auditorium, carved out of the basement, to spend a long time asking each of us where we were from:  I could see no purpose to this gratuitous exercise, except that it saved her telling us about the Opera House.  When she asked for questions, someone asked when it was built:  she replied that she’d tell us later, when we’d seen the video.  Later I overheard, through my headset, someone ask her if there was a basic factsheet:  no, she said, but there’s a book you can buy in the bookshop for A$20 [about £12.50].

The videos were peculiar.  The footage was excellent and the commentary informative.  I simply couldn’t understand why, in a world-class venue with six auditoria and lavish conference facilities, we had to view the first film on a plasma screen while sitting on a flight of stairs, the second projected on to the bare sculptural concrete that the footage described (an interesting art concept but not flattering to the images), and the last two in a bar-area where most of us had to stand.  It felt arbitrary and unwelcoming.

We had the privilege, which alone was worth the price of the tour, of stepping inside both major auditoria, in one of which a lighting check for a touring production was taking place.  Both spaces are unforgettable.  The great shell-shapes (for so I can’t help seeing them) provide acoustically efficient, visually spectacular, remarkably intimate spaces in which respectively 2,678 and 1,507 people can watch and listen to the greatest drama and music the world can offer.

Having travelled across the globe to see this place, I felt offended that the tour I was offered did such poor justice to the building and its story.  I appreciate the practical difficulties of herding groups of 30-40 people round a working building (and while I ate lunch on the terrace afterwards I watched at least four other groups set off in succession on the same hike within less than an hour).  I don’t see why it’s beyond the wit of the Opera House management to offer a clear exposition of the building, its layout, its chronology and its excitement to an audience which includes everyone from casual tourists to knowledgeable students.  After all, Jørn Utzon and Ove Arup eventually found a way to build the place.  Managing guided tours of it should surely be on this side of what Jørn Utzon called “the edge of possibility”.