The roof of the sydney opera house has a whopping 1 056 000 glazed white granite tiles that have been imported from sweden.
Sydney opera house roof material.
Sydney opera house opera house located on port jackson sydney harbour new south wales australia.
Seven a380s could sit wing to wing on the site.
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.
The sydney opera house port jackson sydney harbour.
Though they are meant to be self cleaning in nature they still require maintenance replacement.
The sydney opera house is primarily made from concrete granite glass and ceramic materials.
Vertical loads are carried down the ribs of the roof shells through the podium columns and into the concrete piers.
Sydney opera house model.
Its trademark white shells are made from precast concrete reinforced with steel and are covered by over 1 million ceramic tiles.
Construction of the sydney opera house.
Approximately one million tiles were placed on the roof surfaces in the form of repetitive precast panels.
The impressive and subtle chevron pattern has glossy white matte cream coloured tiles manufactured by höganäs ab.
The building has a precast concrete frame held together by tensioned steel cable.
The glazed ceramic tiles of the sydney opera house.
It took 30 000 mathematical equations to determine the stresses that could be applied to the roof and bertony did them all by hand.
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.
Its unique use of a series of gleaming white sail shaped shells as its roof structure makes it one of the most photographed buildings in the world.
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.
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 was opened by queen elizabeth ii on 20th october 1973.
The sydney opera house was officially completed in 1973 with over 400 000 structural engineering manual hours and 2 000 computational hours.