Month: November 2008

The great Danish architect died in his sleep last night at the age of 90. While Utzen designed many other buildings over a 50 year career his fame came from a building which he was unable to complete due to politics: the Sydney Opera House.

This magnificent structure is my favorite architectural design and, for my money, one of the top four or five works of art created in the modern world. The others: Picasso’s Guernica, Springsteen’s Jungleland, Asimov’s Foundation trilogy and a toss up between Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (part 1) and the collaboration among Damon Runyan, Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows on Guys and Dolls.

My assessment is based on the pure physical beauty, innovative and sophisticated practicality and Wrightian suitability to location of the Opera House. Few casual observers realize that the interior contains not one performance space but half a dozen, each tuned for a different use, and as such is much larger than images might lead you to believe.

An important, if smaller, aspect is Utzen’s design of the roof tiles. Think about how difficult to clean the steep, slippery angles of the roofs must be– or would be, except that the material and shapes Utzen created are kept sparkling but the region’s normal rainfall!

Forced off the project by politicians offended that something which would clearly become the nation’s icon in the global conversation, Jorn was not able to have much of a hand in the interior other than broadly shaping the division of spaces and some of the muscular ribbed ceilings.

Decades later Australia’s leadership attempted to reverse their predecessor’s poor judgment by asking for his assistance in updating some of the interior and by awarding him an honorary degree but Utzen was to ill to travel around the world and so never saw his magnificent creation with his own eyes.

With Thanksgiving just the other day I will say that spending time in and around the Sydney Opera House twice in the last decade are memories I will treasure however much longer I have here myself.

We had a small but enjoyable supper here Thursday with Evan, Tanya and Ed. TS1 made a terrific dinner with a wine and salad assist from Tanya and me carving the bird. A few pics:

We were back east last weekend visiting with my family to celebrate my dad’s 80th birthday. Great time was had by all, except for the flight there when the white guy with dreadlocks kept flipping his nasty hair over the seatback into my face.

Here’s a couple of snaps, one of dad blowing out the candles and the other of the whole Lazar/Rentz brood (including my sister, her husband and his four very tall kids), taken at the big shindig we had)

At the party my sister read a beautiful poem she wrote for dad and I delivered this, er, oration:

Let me start by saying I cannot imagine a person better suited to being a father than mine.

A great father must be in turns a teacher, mentor, friend and task master. This is, unfortunately, not widely understood and even then one or more of the roles is at best paid lip service but my dad has been all four almost all the time.

My father taught me many things but his best lesson was teaching me to read–and understand what I read–by 7 or 8, when I started a lifelong love affair with the written word and the power of thinking.

As a mentor my dad guided me through many life lessons and difficult times. He showed me that morality, ethics are to be valued for their own end and not some distant reward.

As friends we’ve shared many wonderful experiences. We traveled to Israel for my Bar Mitzvah. We watched Star Wars with a rapture rarely matched since. The two of us took a great trip to Italy a few years ago and have had hundreds of great conversations over the years.

I still don’t, however, understand his late in life passion for golf.

Let me sum up by leaving your with this thought: My father has been one of the great joys in my life and one of the most terrific persons I’ve been fortunate to have in my life. So please lift your glasses with me and celebrate your friend and my dad, Richard Lazar.