Jørn Utzon
Jørn Utzon's Mallorcan Retreat
With sugar lumps, in a bar: that was how Jørn Utzon (Denmark, 1918-2008, the architect behind the iconic Sydney Opera House among other buildings) explained to his builder how he should construct Can Lis, Utzon’s retreat in Portopetro, in the east of Mallorca. A house comprised of five elements, with four volumes and a living room without a ceiling, integrated among the pine trees through which the sea breeze, the light and the shadows filter in a truly singular manner.
If we take a look at the buildings Jørn Utzon designed and the words he left behind in written form, we can intuit that he was a man who loved freedom. “What any human being would like is to be completely free to use what’s in yourself, to use every force you have in yourself, every skill”, he once said.
And more than that. To describe what designing the Sydney Opera House at the age of 38 had meant to him, he used the words of the German writer Goethe: “Give me a task I can devote myself to with absolute love and aptitude, and it will no longer be a task. It will turn into an art, an expression of love”. That was the Sydney Opera House for Jørn Utzon.
A man with new ideas
In 2003 Utzon won the Pritzker Prize for his life’s work. The architect did not collect the prize himself - his son Jan went in his place. During the latter’s speech he mentioned this father’s peculiarities when he started building Can Lis, their home on Mallorca: “On the first day,” Jan Utzon said, “when my father appeared at the building site with some bottles of wine, the stonemasons knew he had new ideas, and that the work on that house would be different to all the others they had worked on”.
Jørn Utzon and his wife Lis visited [...]
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