Sydney Opera House

This guide to the Sydney Opera House traces the night in February 1966 when the Danish architect Jorn Utzon walked out of a meeting and resigned from the building he had designed, after the state withheld money he was owed. It follows the public uproar that followed, including a march of a thousand Sydneysiders on parliament demanding his reinstatement, and the engineering breakthrough that finally let his freehand roof sails stand: carving them from slices of a single giant sphere. Look up at the shells above you as you listen — that idea is why they exist at all.