Day 34: The Sydney Opera House

Today started off around 9:00am and I felt well rested (finally). The night had been rather miserable without air-conditioning, but I slept well all the same. Wesley provides breakfast, so I went down to the cafeteria and ate some cereal, fruit, and juice to get prepared for the day.

After breakfast I went back up to my room on the third floor and Brittany was online, so we were able to have our devo and conversation over skype. We didn't talk too long (Bee had to go to work), so I had some more free time before meeting as a group at noon. I decided to spend the next 45 minutes trying to get in contact with the Ausgrid Learning Centre, a 6 Star building here in Sydney that will hopefully work well with my thesis. I never could find any phone number for the building, but Ausgrid is the electricity provider for Australia, so I was able to find a number for the switchboard. The switchboard operator wasn't sure who to put me in contact with for a tour of the building and after connecting me to two different people (both of whom were out of the office until mid-February), stopped answering my calls. (Oh well...)

Unsure about how things were going to work out with the Learning Centre, I went downstairs to meet up with the group right at noon. We left Wesley and caught a bus that took us down near Circular Quay where the Sydney Opera House rests. We arrived at the Quay about 12:30pm, but our tour didn't start until 1:15pm so everyone decided to grab a quick bite of lunch. We walked around and eventually came across a food court area. I stopped in a convenience store along the way and found a Dr. Pepper (Yes!), before ordering some Honey Chicken at one of the Chinese restaurants. The meal was pretty good, especially for only A$9.50.

We ate fairly quickly and then made the short walk down the harbour to the Opera House for the tour. Once we arrived on the steps of the Opera House, it took us a few minutes to locate our tour meeting point which ended up being downstairs in the basement. Our guide was there and she had headphones for everyone to wear during the tour so she wouldn't have to yell for folks to hear.

The tour was pretty interesting. Our guide took us through some of the performance theaters and it was really cool to see the different styles of staging and seating arrangements. The seats in each theater have been engineered to soak up sound as if a person was sitting in the chair. This feature allows the performers to get a good feel during dress rehearsal what things will sound like during the performance. Even if the entire auditorium doesn't sell out, the sound of the show is not affected. Also, this design provides the sound operators with the ability to ensure people in the back have the same quality sound experience as those sitting in the middle or front. We also watched three videos during the tour that explained the design and construction of the Opera House. Basically, the design of the building was a global contest and hundreds of designs were submitted from architects all over the world. The design selected came from a young Danish architect. Ironically enough, a Finnish-American judge who was late to the judging pulled the Danish architect's design out from a pile of designs that had already been discarded. The rules of the contest had been broken, but nevertheless the Danish architect's designs were accepted. The next challenge came with the construction of the building. Nobody knew how or if the building could be built. Site work actually began well before the engineers had figured out how to build the design. After a couple of years, the secret to building the sloping roof design was found by cutting parts from a sphere and putting them together. A "rib" design was developed to keep the walls tall and thin. Finally, after 16 years of construction, the Sydney Opera House was completed. Here are some pictures from the tour:

Headphones for the tour

Outside the Sydney Opera House

The round pieces of wood break up sound to keep sound from echoing noisily in the foyers.

"Ribbed" Arches of the Opera House

The ribs sprout from a single origin

Bay front of the Opera House designed to look like a cruise ship hull.

The tour lasted about an hour, but I enjoyed it. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the auditoriums for copyright reasons, but they were spectacular as well. The group left the Opera House and several folks decided to take a walk around town for the remainder of the afternoon. We went in tons of outdoor stores, but we did visit a few others. My favorite was the Apple store. There were iPads and MacBooks everywhere that you could play games on and have an interactive experience with the Apple products. The store was a bit futuristic in design, but the staircase was really cool:

Solid glass step stairs with a stainless steel frame

We continued to walk around and I happened to look up at one of the buildings and saw the name "Ausgrid" on the top. Hopeful that I might find a lead for a tour of their Learning Centre, I went inside and made an inquiry about who to talk to for tours of the Learning Centre. The receptionist acted really weird about contacting the folks at the Learning Centre before finally giving me a piece of paper with a name on it. ("I'm not allowed to give you his number.") A name was good enough for me though, so I left with a plan to call the switchboard and ask to be transferred directly to Aaron Russell. I walked about a block to catch up with the group and we continued to walk around for another hour or so before retiring to some tables around Circular Quay. Some folks bought drinks, but it was a fairly hot and humid day so I went and purchased some Baskin Robins ice cream. I wasn't fond of the price, but it was good all the same.

The afternoon began to turn towards dinner time, so we left our tables and walked up the street and went to a restaurant advertising A$10.00 steaks. (The steak was a good size, but it didn't have much flavor and took some time to chew.) Once we had eaten our meal, everyone felt like heading back to Wesley for some rest. I took a bus and got back to my room about 7:45pm. I checked Facebook before taking a nap. (I didn't exactly mean to do this.) When I woke up, I was extremely surprised to read 11:44pm on my phone clock. I didn't feel like doing any work and it was too late to do anything else, so I just rolled back over and went to sleep for the night.