Unit 12 The Sydney Opera House

1 Introduction

1.1 Read the text title and hypothesize what the text is about. Write down your hypothesis.

1.2 What do you know concerning this issue? List your ideas in the table left column "1 know".

I know that...	I have learnt that...

1.3 If you know answers to these questions write them down in the space given after each question.

1	Do you know anything about the Sydney Opera House?
2	Is there anything unusual in its design?
3	Is the Sydney Opera House used only for theatrical production?
4	Who was the architect of the Sydney Opera House?
5	What does the Sydney Opera House consist of?
6	How many stages were in construction of the Sydney Opera House?
7	What was the cost estimate of the Sydney Opera House?

The Sydney Opera House is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as appointed on 28 June 2007. Designed by Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect, the Sydney Opera House is one of the most distinctive and famous 20th century buildings, and one of the most famous performing arts venues in the world. As well as many touring theatre, ballet, and musical productions, the Opera House is the home of Opera Australia, the Sydney Theatre Company and the Sydney Symphony. It is administered by the Opera House Trust, under the New South Wales Ministry of the Arts.

Description.The Sydney Opera House is an expressionist modern design, with a series of large precast concrete 'shells', each taken from a hemisphere of the same radius, forming the

roofs of the Structure. The Opera House covers 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres) of land. It is 183 metres (605 feet) long and about 120 metres (388 feet) wide at its widest point. It is supported on 580 concrete piers sunk up to 25 metres below sea level. Its power supply is equivalent for a town of 25,000 people. The power is distributed by 645 kilometres of electrical cable.

The roofs of the House are covered with 1.056 million glossy white and matte cream Swedish-made tiles, though from a distance the tiles look only white.

Despite their self-cleaning nature, they are still subject to periodic maintenance and replacement.

The Concert Hall and Opera Theatre are each contained in the two largest groups of shells, and the other theatres are located on the sides of the shell groupings. The form of the shells is chosen to reflect the internal height requirements, rising from the low entrance spaces, over the seating areas and up to the high stage towers. A much smaller group of shells set to one side of the Monumental steps and houses the Bennelong Restaurant. Although the roof structures of the Sydney Opera House are commonly referred to as shells (as they are in this article), they are in fact not shells in a strictly structural S~ense, but are instead precast concrete panels supported by precast concrete ribs. The building's interior is composed of pink granite quarried in Tarana and wood and brush box plywood supplied from northern New South Wales.

Performance venues and facilities. The Sydney Opera House contains five theatres, five rehearsal studios, two main halls, four restaurants, six bars and numerous souvenir shops.Besides theatrical productions, venues at the Sydney Opera House are also used for functions such as weddings, parties and conferences.

Construction history. Planning for the Sydney Opera House began in the late 1940s. The competition was launched on 13 September 1955 and received a total of 233 entries from 32 countries. The criteria specified a large hall seating 3000 and a small hall for 1200 people, each to be designed for different uses including full-scale operas, orchestral and choral concerts, mass meetings, lectures, ballet performances and other presentations. The basic design announced in 1957 was the one submitted by Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect. Utzon arrived in Sydney in 1957 to help supervise the project.

Module: profess -

2 Reading

1. Scanning. Look through the text and define whether your hypoth si information from the text with your notes (1.1).

2. Skimming. Find in the text the answers to the questions you fax reading. Add the missing answers to the table (1.3).

3. Grammar. State the sense relations between words of the marked ■ proposed algorithm in the Tips.

4. Lexis

1. Tick in the list (1.4) the words and expressions you realized afi without dictionary. Write down their translation in the table percentage of your ability to guess the meaning of the words fron

2. Find in the dictionary the words you could not translati translation in the table (1.4) and calculate the percentage oj learn.