Sydney Opera House Roof Material

Sydney opera house was added to unesco s world heritage list in 2007 there are more than 1 million roof tiles covering approximately 1 62 hectares sitting over the structure.

Sydney opera house roof material.

Sydney opera house model. Timber illustrates the origin of the roof geometry of the sydney opera house designed by jørn utzon made by ove arup and partners england australia 1961 65. The roof of the sydney opera house has a whopping 1 056 000 glazed white granite tiles that have been imported from sweden. The building has a precast concrete frame held together by tensioned steel cable.

Though they are meant to be self cleaning in nature they still require maintenance replacement. From 1957 to 1963 the design team went through at least 12 iterations of the form of the shells trying to find an economically acceptable form including schemes with parabolas circular ribs and ellipsoids before a workable solution was completed. Vertical loads are carried down the ribs of the roof shells through the podium columns and into the concrete piers. Employed by hornibrook the queensland construction company that worked on the opera house bertony was tasked with figuring out how to design the steel erection arch that made construction of the roof possible.

It took 30 000 mathematical equations to determine the stresses that could be applied to the roof and bertony did them all by hand. Seven a380s could sit wing to wing on the site. Its trademark white shells are made from precast concrete reinforced with steel and are covered by over 1 million ceramic tiles. They were made in sweden.

The sydney opera house is primarily made from concrete granite glass and ceramic materials. As construction of the podium began in sydney jørn utzon and his team of architects back in hallebaek explored how to build the opera house s shell shaped roof. Construction of the sydney opera house. Sydney opera house opera house located on port jackson sydney harbour new south wales australia.

The impressive and subtle chevron pattern has glossy white matte cream coloured tiles manufactured by höganäs ab. Between 1958 and 1962 the roof design for the sydney opera house evolved through various iterations as utzon and his team pursued parabolic ellipsoid and finally spherical geometry to derive the final form of the shells. The sydney opera house was officially completed in 1973 with over 400 000 structural engineering manual hours and 2 000 computational hours. Approximately one million tiles were placed on the roof surfaces in the form of repetitive precast panels.

The glazed ceramic tiles of the sydney opera house.