POSTCARD N.66 - Australia

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 11th January; received on the 26th January
Postcard image: Antonov 12
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It is not every week that I get two postcards from a place so distant as Australia. What's even more uncommon is to have different views of the same landmark on both postcards, but that's what happened, since a couple of days  after receiving Postcard I got this beautiful one with a general view of the Sidney harbour with the bridge and the amazing Opera building glowing in the dusk light. Thanks a lot for a beautiful card, Karen.

Australia is on my "most wanted" list and I'm sure that one day I'll be able to take a photo of the  Opera building myself and maybe go inside for a concert or so... (one can ever want....)

Conceived by Danish architect  and Pritzker laureate Jørn Utzon, Sidney's Opera House was inaugurated in 1973 after a complicated building process that started in 1959 but was to suffer several setbacks, including the mid course resignation of its chief architect in 1966.

In the end, after 14 years of construction works and a dramatic overspill of costs, the Opera was inaugurated and luckily so, because it is one of the most iconic buildings in the world, having been atributed World Heritage Site Status by the Unesco in 2007, and as such must have already generated notoriety revenues for Australia  that overshadow its 102 Million AUD pricetag, 

At another scale, this reminds me of our own beautiful Casa da Música at Porto.

Designed by Rem Koolhaas, another Pritzker award winning architect,  It was to be inaugurated in 2001 within the scope of Porto 2001 European capital of Culture, but it only opened in 2005 following delays in construction and a significant overspill in construction costs. Another common feature with Sindey's Opera is that Ove Arup was also one of the main building contractors involved.